Sacred Heart Parish
MASS INTENTIONS FOR THE WEEK
Saturday, September 25
4:00 PM Claire J. Carroll
Sunday, September 26
9:00 AM Parishioners of Sacred Heart
11:45 AM James Patrick Walsh
Monday, September 27
12:05 PM James F. Ruston
Saturday, October 2
4:00 PM Parishioners of Sacred Heart
Sunday, October 3
10:30 AM Mary Schafer
11:45 AM Barry Joseph O’Leary
CONFESSIONS
Saturday, October 2 – 2:00 to 3:30 PM – Fr. Connelly
READINGS FOR THE TWENTY-SEVENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
First Reading: Habakkuk 1:2-3; 2:2-4
Second Reading: 2 Timothy 1:6-8, 13-14
Gospel Reading: Luke17:5-10
GUILD OF ST. FRANCIS NEWS
Holly Harvest Workshops: In preparation for the Holly Harvest Fair in November, workshops will continue on Tuesday evenings from 7 to 9 p.m. through November 16, in the new Guild Room on the second floor of the convent. Please call Barbara Hatem at 617-969-2567 if you have any questions.
Day of Recollection and Mass: On Monday, October 4, the Guild of St. Francis will hold their Day of Recollection. Members will gather in the Parish Center at 10 a.m. for coffee and pastries. Mass will be celebrated at 12:05 p.m. in the Lower Church, followed by lunch in the Parish Center. This year’s speaker is Barbara Neem. She will talk about: “A Christian Woman’s Experience Living in the Middle East 1996-2007”. The fee is $15 per person. Checks, payable to the Guild of St. Francis, should be mailed to Sally Daly,
138 Lincoln Street, Newton, MA 02461 by September 30. Please call Sally Daly at 617-527-4468 or Mary English at 617-332-8656 for questions.
MAGDALEN COLLEGE – WARNER, NH
Saturday, October 2, at 7 PM
Magdalen College invites you to attend Justin Fatica's "Win It All" World Tour with Jon Niven of LIFT Ministries. This best-selling author will be preaching his radical call to holiness for people of all ages. The presentation will be followed by a Holy Hour led by Jon Niven (confession available during this hour). Tickets are $10 for students, $12 for adults. Order by calling 603-456-2656 or visiting www.magdalen.edu
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION NEWS
Today our Religious Education program begins for the Sunday CCD program from 10:30 – 11:45 am. Our 1st day of classes for the Tuesday program begins on Sept 28th from 4–5:15 pm. Our teachers have been preparing and gearing up for the new year and we are anxious to work even more closely this year with CCD parents to pass on our faith in the God who loved us enough to make the ultimate sacrifice of His only Son for our redemption! Please look out for your children coming home with questions for you and asking you to share your faith with them!
Meanwhile, at this time we are still looking for teachers for the Sunday and Tuesday program in grades 1-5. Please contact the Religious Ed office if you feel called to share the faith you have received.
Our Confirmation II parents (grade 10 only) are requested to attend a Theology of the Body Information Night tonight from 7-8:15 pm in the Convent. This is the curriculum your teens will be receiving in preparation for Confirmation. You will meet the new Confirmation Coordinator, Roseann Furbush who will be leading and guiding you and your students along the path to Confirmation.
May we grow as teachers and parents in holiness and faithfulness to Christ this year!
Michelle Solomon, RE Director
WALK FOR LIFE
Join us on Sunday, October 3rd for the Massachusetts Citizens for Life annual Walk for Life. Bring your neighbors, family, and friends as we walk to show support for the many wonderful pro-life programs doing good work and saving lives across the state. The Pre-Walk Celebration begins in the Boston Common at 1:30 pm and the Walk begins at 2:30 at the Parkman Bandstand near the corner of Tremont and Boylston Streets. Registration is $5 per person payable at the event. Sacred Heart Parish is pleased to provide round trip bus transportation for those interested in attending. The bus will leave from the parking lot adjacent to the Church at 1:00 pm, following the 11:45 Mass. Please call the rectory (617-969-2248) and let us know in advance (by Thursday 9/30) if you would like to travel with us on the bus so that we have an accurate head count. This event is a wonderful way to kick off Pro Life Month and we encourage you to attend!
OFFERTORY INCOME
Weekend of September 18/19 $4,492
IS SCIENCE FOR GOD OR AGAINST GOD???
Recently Bantam Books/Random House published the latest book of Stephen Hawking and did so with gigantic publicity from the popular press all over the Western world. The book is entitled, “The Grand Design”. The authors are Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. As reviewer Sean Carroll writes: “Putting the word ‘design’ in the book’s title is the kind of cheeky humor Hawking has become known for. The authors’ answer to the riddle of the universe has nothing to do with intelligent design or with religion generally.” Carroll then quotes from the expressed purpose of the authors – “Some would claim the answer to these questions is that there is a God who chose to create the universe that way... We claim, however, that it is possible to answer these questions purely within the realm of science and without involving any divine beings.”
What sort of question is Hawking asking? He’s no small thinker; he thinks big! Why is there something rather than nothing? Why does nature have the laws it does? Why do we exist? The authors of “The Grand Design” do not claim that they have proven that God doesn’t exist. Their claim is a little different. They claim to understand enough about the laws of physics to come to a different conclusion: that we don’t need God to understand the universe. Is Hawking’s work in physics a threat to the opening two chapters of Genesis? Is Hawking’s work in physics a threat to Catholic teachings of God as Creator of all that is visible and invisible? The answer is “not at all”. It’s not within the realm of physics that we are going to find answers to the big questions that physicists and philosophers and theologians are wont to ask. Science is neither for God nor against God. Individual scientists can be for God or against God. Some scientists, who are for God, say that, like Aristotelian science at work in the thinking of Thomas Aquinas, their work in science does not conclude with regard to God, but can be helpful to the work of philosophy and theology as these latter disciplines deal with the question of God and creation. Other scientists may come to the opposite conclusion. The method of science is and has to be a-theistic, that is, it is materialist in that it deals with experimentation based on scientific observation.
When one thinks of physicists today, no one is as well known as Einstein was except for Stephen Hawking. Why is Hawking so well known? First of all, he’s a great scientist. Secondly, he has the soul of a missionary. As he has said: “I want my books on airport bookstalls”, and he has learned the art of how to put them there. Of course, part of Hawking’s notoriety comes in part from his own personal story. For decades the so-called Lou Gehrig disease has done terrible work on Dr. Hawking’s body. At the same time his mind is perfectly clear and unaffected by the disease. In a recent review in the New York Times, Dwight Garner describes Hawking’s as “a pinging black box amid the physical wreckage”.
Now let me introduce to you at this time a Jesuit priest, former President of Gonzaga in Spokane, an excellent author with much competence in the realm of contemporary physics. His name is Robert J. Spitzer, now President of Magis Center of Reason and Faith in Irvine, California. He reminds us that Dr. Hawking is an outstanding physicist, but his philosophical and metaphysical skills are less than honed. Father Spitzer points out that, in the book “The Grand Design”, Hawking makes the statement that because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself out of nothing. This is what Hawking calls “spontaneous creation”. For him, spontaneous creation is the reason why there is something rather than nothing; the reason why the universe exists; the reason why we exist. To counter such an assertion, one who is not a physicist cannot argue with a physicist by using the methods of contemporary physics. It introduces what a philosopher would call metaphysics. This expression is from the great philosopher Aristotle. Once he had completed his treatise on the general science of nature, which he called physics, he then, good philosopher that he was, wrote another treatise which was to be the post-physics. In the Greek language of Aristotle, metaphysics is what follows after physics. He meant by “what follows after physics” that area of philosophy which deals with the laws of being, the laws of human thinking, upon which physics and every other area of human concern must necessarily rest. This is why Fr. Spitzer makes use of a basic principle which tells us – “From nothing only nothing can come”. Then he writes, “If the physical universe had a beginning (a point at which it came into existence), then prior to that point it was nothing, and if it was nothing, then it could not have created itself (because only nothing can come from nothing).” “So what does this imply”, Fr. Spitzer asks – “The very reality that Dr. Hawking wants to avoid, namely, a transcendental power, not part of the universe, which can cause the universe to come into existence.”
Dear reader, I trust this column has not been overly confusing. There is science, there is philosophy, there is theology. All seek what is true in their own domains and with their own methods. Science is anchored in our own material world, as are philosophy and theology. But the latter two can transcend the material world. The experimental sciences can not. So what does Catholic theology say to us about God and who God is and how God is our Creator? Make sure to keep your subscription going and read about it next week.
Father Connelly
SIGNINGS
The scale of modern inequity staggers the mind and fills us with despair and self loathing. This, in turn, drives us to resent the existence of the poor and fuels a desire to get rid of them. We let slide policies that aim at trying to sterilize them and abort their offspring; all like trite news of bed bug exterminations that recently sprung up in New York. If we could only eliminate the poor then we might be able to sleep again and enjoy some "fine art”. Naturally this doesn't work and although it is formally tried in our world today it is patently absurd. It is upside down. If we want to help the poor we don't treat them as animals who have no self control. We treat them with dignity and show them our generosity. We become poorer ourselves in the process. It costs us. Then we become less rich and they, less poor. In an instant there is less of that horrifying large scale problem of inequity lurking about.
Getting rid of bed bugs never involves killing the bed's poor owner or children. It does mean helping to the point of risking bed bug exposure. Sounds gross or uncivilized? Look at the cross. Read today's Gospel again. That encounter with the grime of the cross is the only way. We must stoop to the level of poor dirty Lazarus (a symbol of Christ in his poverty) if we wish to be made just. Then we begin to experience the rest we seek and the finest of all good things: Heaven.
In Christ,
Fr. St. Martin
ARCHDIOCESAN JUSTICE CONVOCATION
Charity and Justice in Our daily Lives
The Convocation featuring Cardinal Sean O'Malley with Keynote Address by Fr. Bryan Hehir will be held at BC High on October 9, 2010 from 8:30 AM – 2:30 PM. $10 fee includes lunch. For further information and to register, visit: http://www.bostoncatholic.org/Offices-And-Services/Office-Form.aspx?ekfrm=18406&pid=464.
SAINT JOHN SCHOOL IN WELLESLEY
OPEN HOUSE
Pre-School through Grade 6: Come and take a look at Saint John School, a Catholic School for today's family! Visit us on Tuesday, October 5, from 8:00-9:30 a.m. or from 6:30-8:00 p.m. to tour the school, meet teachers, visit classrooms and talk with our Principal and parents. We are located at
9 Ledyard Street in Wellesley. Visit us on the web at www.saintjohnschool.net or you may call Principal Kathleen Aldridge at 781-235-0300. Come and see what a Catholic education at Saint John School is all about!
ARISE SEASON 5 - WE ARE THE GOOD NEWS
Faith sharing groups will begin the week of October 3rd. Leaders will contact members of their groups and distribute books. LET US ALL PRAY: that we will become “better hearers and doers of the Word of God.”
AGAIN GREAT SUPPORT FOR
MOTHER CAROLINE ACADEMY
The students and volunteer teachers of Mother Caroline Academy are very appreciative of your donations of school supplies!!! THANKS for your generous support!!
Margaret LeBlanc Jane McGuire
WOMEN’S DISCUSSION GROUP
For their fall reading, the Women’s Discussion Group has selected the book Wrestling With Our Inner Angels: Faith, Mental Illness, and the Journey to Wholeness, by Nancy Kehoe. The author is a nun and a clinician whose work is well known with the mentally ill. She is also a clinical instructor in psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at the Cambridge Health Alliance – an affiliate of Harvard Medical School. Meetings are held on Sundays from 10:30 AM to noontime in the convent dining room. The first meeting will be held on SUNDAY, OCTOBER 3, AT 10:30 am. NEW MEMBERS ARE ALWAYS WELCOME!!
CALENDAR OF EVENTS
EXTENDED COFFEE HOUR:
Sunday, September 26 – 10:00 AM to 1 PM – Parish Center
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION – GRADES 1-5:
Sunday, Sept. 26 – 10:30 AM to 11:45 AM – Lower Church
PRAYER SHAWL MINISTRY:
Monday, September 27 – At the home of Peg Miller
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION – Tuesday, September 28
Grades 1-5 – 4:00 to 5:15 PM – Lower Church
Grades 7-10 – 7:00 to 8:30 PM – Lower Church
GUILD HOLLY HARVEST WORKSHOP:
Tuesday, September 28 – 7:00 PM - Convent (Guild Room)
PRAYER GROUP:
Wednesday, September 29 – 7:30 PM – Convent (Chapel)
COFFEE HOUR:
Friday, October 1 – Following 9 AM Mass – Parish Center
LITURGY, ADORATION AND THE ROSARY:
Saturday, October 2 – 9 AM to 12:30 PM – Lower Church
EXTENDED COFFEE HOUR:
Sunday, October 3 – 10:00 AM to 1 PM – Parish Center
WOMEN’S DISCUSSION GROUP:
Sunday, October 3 – 10:30 AM – Convent (Dining Room)