Parish Picnic Next Sunday!  Mass at Noon in Church—Picnic in the School Gym!  Come one, Come all!!!

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Everyone is invited to our Parish Picnic next Sunday, August 27th. We are grateful to our Men’s Club for providing the meat and corn on the cob. We would appreciate if you could bring a dish to share. There will be at least 100 people at the picnic, so please bring enough to feed approximately 15-20 people.

Those who bring a dish will automatically be entered into a raffle to win a nice prize!

 We changed things up a bit for those donating dishes.

· Last names A-G—Desserts or Fruits

· Last names H-O—Appetizers or Dips

· Last names P-Z—Salads—Greens, Pasta, Coleslaw, etc.

 

If you could drop off your dish at the food table prior to the noon Mass that will help our organizers get the food ready in a timely fashion. We will have a 50/50 raffle and games for the kids. We hope to see everyone! Any questions, feel free to see one of our Parish Council members.

 

Beatification Mass of Father Solanus Casey

Are you interested in going to the Beatification Mass of Fr. Solanus Casey at Ford Field on November 18th?  If so, we are sharing 100 tickets with Our Lady of Loretto Parish. We have chartered 2 buses to help with your transportation. The cost is $15 per person. This is a first come first served basis. You must call the parish office at 313-532-4394 to secure your reservation and your money must be paid by September 11th. If you have any questions, please call Bonnie at the Parish Office.

 

Parishioner, Albert Betzler, is a student at Sacred Heart major Seminary. His Professor Tamra Fromm, suggested he submit his reflections to our Sunday Bulletin. Below you will find the fifth in the series.

 Sense of Sin

My friend, Diana, is my theological arch-nemesis. I say that fondly as we have charitably debated each other for years. She calls me “Paladin” because I “drink the Catholic Kool-Aid”. I call her “Ranger,” after a morally ambiguous anime character that doesn’t believe in the existence of sin. Like Ranger, Diana believes that everyone should follow their own moral code. As she once told me (rather theatrically), “I’ve thrown off the yoke of the Catholic Church. No one tells me what to do anymore. I’m free!”

But that’s just it. She’s not free. Sin is an illusion of freedom, a great lie of slavery perpetuated by the greatest liar of all. Unfortunately, many people believe as Diana does. How, as Christians, do we convince them sin is real? I start by appealing to their reason, by making a connection between the physical and the spiritual, the tangible and the intangible. I begin with creation. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1). Clearly God made a good and ordered world. This is evident in the physical laws that govern the universe. After all, everyone believes the earth revolves around the sun or in Newton’s Laws of Motion. They are physical, undeniable, and they affect us.

But man is not just a material being. He is also a spiritual one. Of all God’s creations, man is the only one who is a composite of body and soul made in in the image and likeness of God. We belong to both realms. I think it’s reasonable to say that if God gave us physical laws that affect our bodies, He would also give us moral laws to govern our souls.

For example, if I ignore the Laws of Gravity my body is going to regret it. If I commit adultery, I blacken my soul by breaking my friendship with God and by damaging my relationship with my wife, regardless of whether she’s aware of the affair or not. When committing a wrong, most people feel the sting of conscience. Why? Jeremiah 31:33 comes to mind: “I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts.” I think deep down people intrinsically know what they are doing is wrong but willfully choose to ignore it under the misconception that they are free to do as they please regardless of moral consequence. The more they engage in this behavior, the less their conscience stings them. Eventually it ceases to protest. Their vice has now become a habit and their perceived freedom is, in reality, slavery. Pornography is that way; even if you come to intellectually realize it is wrong, the sin is so powerful and has the will so enslaved, it takes God’s grace to break free.

In the same way my intellect uses fear to warn me away from the edge of a cliff because I might fall, I think our conscience serves as an early warning system, a whisper from God that we are about to violate one of His moral laws.

In other words, we are about to commit a sin. Otherwise, why would we feel that way?

My advice? Heed your conscience!

Mr. Albert Betzler

Different but Complementary

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Parishioner, Albert Betzler, is a student at Sacred Heart major Seminary. His Professor Tamra Fromm, suggested he submit his reflections to our Sunday Bulletin. Below you will find the fourth in the series.

If you’ve never read Catechism passages CCC 369-372 I highly recommend it. Those paragraphs are beautiful and have challenged me, personally, to explore my marriage in a more profound way. They scream volumes about God’s wisdom concerning matrimony, procreation, and family. Through repetitive reading and self-reflection, I am realizing things I never did before. It’s a masterpiece! I feel sad, however, that today it is being defaced by fornication, pornography, contraception, homosexual unions, and abortion.

Nevertheless, those passages illustrate how our differences as male and female give us dignity and complement one another. On the face of it, that may seem like an anti-intuitive statement. People don’t usually think of difference as being complementary or in balance. But it’s true. How?

First, despite man and woman being different sexes, we both share the same nature, a composite of body and soul. That soul is spiritual made in the image and likeness of God. As such, “Man and woman are both with one and the same dignity “in the image of God.”” (CCC 369).

Adding to that, “being man” and “being woman” are both reflections of God. Yes, God is sexless, a pure spirit. Nevertheless, as man and woman, we reflect “something of the infinite perfection of God: those of a mother and father and husband.” (CCC 370). Our differences give us dignity and are complementary because those differences share the same source: God. They are reflections of Him. This is further supported by the Catechism: “He is neither man nor woman: he is God. He also transcends human fatherhood and motherhood, although he is their origin and standard.” (CCC 239).

Secondly, the differences between men and women complement each other because we were made for one another. This is clearly seen in marriage. Man and woman are two halves of one whole, one flesh. Together, we form one reproductive system. “God blessed them, saying: “Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28) and “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body” (Genesis 2:24). This is the natural order of things and why homosexual unions can never be considered marriage. Even though two men or two women are the same, they are not complementary. It is the differences between man and woman that make us complimentary. Not the sameness. God did not create two men or two women. He created man and woman.

Finally, in my theology class we learned that our very being calls for union with another person. This union, this marriage, echoes the Blessed Holy Trinity. In FJ Sheed’s Theology for Beginners, page 44, it says: “In the Son, the Father utters His self-knowledge; in the Holy Spirit, Father and Son utter their mutual love.” Later he goes on to warn “We must be on guard against thinking that first the Father had a Son, then Father and Son united to produce the Holy Spirit.” (Page 47).

I must confess I thought that very thing when I first read it. But after some reflection it clearly mirrors marriage and family from an earthly perspective. Man and woman unite and become one flesh through the Sacrament of Marriage. Their shared love produces a third person, a child. That family, that community, mirrors the community between the divine persons of the Blessed Holy Trinity. And to think – it’s all brought about by those differences that make us complementary!

Albert Betzler

The Fun Run & Spaghetti Dinner – Desperate Need for Goody Bag Donations!

September 17th is the date of our 12th Annual Fun Run and Spaghetti Dinner. As we are in the beginning stages of planning this event we would like to offer the opportunity to you, our parishioners, to be a sponsor.

With a sponsorship of $100 or more:

· Your name will be printed on the back of our official race T-Shirts

· Your name will appear in our parish bulletin

· You will receive a Sponsor T-Shirt as an expression of our appreciation

   In the past few years many parishioners have come forward to be sponsors, we hope you will consider becoming one of them.  

   We are also looking for “treasures” for our runners/walkers goody bags. We normally have approximately 250 runners/walkers and we will take just about anything that will put a smile on our participants faces.

   If you would like to be a sponsor or a donor for our goody bags, please call the Parish Office at 313-532-4394 x101.

Bonnie Danic
Jim Soter

Co-Race Directors