Good News in Wichita: Four Newly Ordained Priests and Three Deacons!

Two years ago I attended the last Ordination Mass for priests in our diocese; last year we had four transitional Deacons ordained, but no priests. This year: four priests and three deacons; so next year, God willing, Bishop Kemme will ordain three more priests! I'm not sure if there will be ordinations to the diaconate next May.

I did not attend this year's Ordination Mass but it was an spiritually emotional event two years ago for me, particularly when Bishop Kemme thanked the parents of the priests. I watched this year's Mass on-line, live streamed from the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.

The deacons were ordained on Thursday, May 23, the anniversary of Servant of God Emil J. Kapaun's death!

The Gospel for the Mass described Jesus sending the 72 disciples out like lambs among wolves to prepare different towns for His future visits, and Bishop Kemme did pick up on that line briefly in his homily.

When I heard that passage, I could not help but think of the recent news story about the priest who had to protect the Blessed Sacrament from desecration in Florida last Sunday:

Police in St. Cloud, Florida, have charged [Father Fidel] Rodriguez with one count of battery stemming from the incident, which occurred during the noon Mass at St. Thomas Aquinas Church. . . .

Fortunately, the Diocese of Orlando is backing Father Fidel (what an appropriate name for a priest so faithful to his vocation) completely:

“At that point, the woman forcefully placed her hand in the vessel and grabbed some sacred Communion hosts, crushing them. Having only one hand free, Father Rodriguez struggled to restrain the woman as she refused to let go of the hosts. When the woman pushed him and reacting to a perceived act of aggression, Father Rodriguez bit her hand so she would let go of the hosts she grabbed. The woman was immediately asked to leave,” the diocese said in a written statement.

“It should be noted Father Rodriguez had no prior knowledge of the woman’s background. Further, while the Diocese of Orlando does not condone physical altercations such as this, in good faith, Father Rodriguez was simply attempting to prevent an act of desecration of the holy Communion, which, as a priest, Father Rodriguez is bound by duty to protect,” the diocese said.

The statement continues:

“The full video and the police report show the woman initiated physical contact and acted inappropriately. The priest was trying to protect the holy Communion from this sacrilegious act.

“In the Catholic tradition, the Eucharist is considered ‘the source and summit’ of worship and faith. The act of participation in holy Communion therefore calls for a proper understanding, reverence, and devotion. It is not something a person can arbitrarily demand and is certainly not a mere ‘cookie’ as the complainant called it.”

Please pray for Father Fidel and for our four new priests, Reverend Fathers Jesus Banuelos, Matthew Cooke, Caleb Kuestersteffen and Miles Swigart and three transitional deacons, Grant Husling, Joseph Mick, and Nicholas Samsel, that the wolves may stay away from them!

From the USCCB, a prayer for priests.

From the Fatima prayers, reparation for the desecration of the Holy Eucharist:

O Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore Thee profoundly. 

I offer Thee the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifferences by which He is offended. 

By the infinite merits of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary I beg the conversion of poor sinners. 

Amen.

I took the picture at the top of the Cathedral sanctuary during Advent, I think!

The Season of Novenas: Starting with the Holy Spirit

May and June seem to be prime Novena months. We start with the one Novena that the Catholic Church recommends to all for prayer: the Novena--nine days of prayer--between the Solemnity of the Ascension and Pentecost (Friday after Ascension Thursday to Saturday, the Vigil of Pentecost). EWTN's website describes the Novena to the Holy Spirit as:

 . . . the prototype of all novenas. It commemorates the nine days between the Ascension of Our Lord and the descent of the Holy Spirit on the first Pentecost Sunday. During this time Our Lady and the twelve Apostles prayed in the upper room for the coming of the Paraclete.

After Pentecost, there are two other great Solemnities to prepare for: Corpus Christi (celebrated on Sunday, June 2) and the Sacred Heart of Jesus (celebrated on Friday, June 7), which will overlap. Add to that a Novena for Life, sponsored by the USCCB, leading up to the Feast of the Visitation: this is the season of Novenas indeed. 

And in my diocese of Wichita, Kansas, we're encouraged to pray a Novena from June 1 to 9 "for Father Kapaun’s cause, that meetings this summer in Rome may see him named Venerable". On the website for the Novena, we're told the source for these days of prayer:

While stationed in Japan before the outbreak of the Korean War, Chaplain Emil Kapaun gave a series of radio broadcasts based on the Eight Beatitudes to his troops. Two months later he and his men were sent to the defense of South Korea. Over the last year of his life, both on the front lines and facing inhumane captivity, Chaplain Kapaun’s actions showed his own deep understanding and fidelity to the Beatitudes. Aside from day one and a few additions, each of the reflections in this novena comes from these radio broadcasts.

A portion of the final two days of the broadcast were recorded on audio- the only surviving sound we have of Father Kapaun’s voice.

You may listen to Servant of God, Father Emil J. Kapaun's voice here.

There's also an update on the status of his cause. Today, May 23, is the anniversary of his death in 1951.

The practice of prayers for Nine Days or Nine Weeks, or Nine Months, of course, begins with the nine months between the Annunciation and the Nativity of Our Lord: from March 25 to December 25. There are also connections to prayers for the recently departed souls of loved ones. More on novenas here at the old Catholic Encyclopedia.

Corpus Christi, have mercy on us.

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us.

St. Elizabeth, pray for us.

St. John the Baptist, pray for us.

Servant of God, Emil J. Kapaun, pray for us.

Image source (Public Domain): Father Emil Kapaun celebrating Mass using the hood of a jeep as his altar, October 7, 1950

Father Kapaun at Newman University

On Saturday, September 24, I attended the Father Kapaun Symposium at Newman University. It was great program with highlights of the celebration of Holy Mass in St. John's Chapel in the Sacred Heart Hall, a presentation by William Latham on the experience of the POW's in the Korean War followed by a panel discussion, a fine lunch, and three great ferverinos by priests of our diocese. The Seminar was sponsored by the Father Kapaun Cause of the Diocese of Wichita and the Gerber Institute for Catholic Studies at Newman University.

William Latham is the author of Cold Days in Hell: American POWs in Korea published by Texas A&M University Press. He provided both background on the Korean War and Chaplain Kapaun's actions in the North Korean prison camp in which he died on May 23, 1951. Latham also provided the information that was instrumental in Chaplain Kapaun posthumously receiving the Medal of Honor on April 11, 2013 after a previous failed attempt:

Around 2002, Bill Latham entered the picture. Latham began noticing the name “Kapaun” in papers he collected. At reunions, Latham thought there was something wonderful about how soldiers talked about him. They said to him that Kapaun should have received the medal. The old soldiers’ passion for their friend touched Latham. After he heard about Todd Tiahrt’s failed application, he called the congressman’s office. Tiahrt’s staff told Latham that in 2002, Tiahrt had recommended to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that Kapaun be awarded the medal. Rumsfeld rejected it because of lack of “substantiating evidence.” Latham suspected there was plenty of substantiating evidence. He now went to find it.

Read more on how the story unfolds here. For more on Latham’s new book, in which Fr. Kapaun figures prominently, click here.

Latham is an excellent presenter and kindly gave me a private history lesson during a break when I asked why, if the Soviet Union and the United States of America had been negotiating about the future of Korea, it was the Chinese who supported the North Korean Army when they crossed the 38th Parallel into South Korea. We had to sit down because it was about a fifteen minute answer! He knows that history better than I know the history of the English Reformation!

Father Kapaun was ordained in Saint John's Chapel at what was then Sacred Heart Junior College, founded by the Adorers of the Blood of Christ, by Bishop Christian Winkelmann on June 1, 1940. 

The chapel of course was named for Saint John the Evangelist, but since Newman's Beatification and Canonization, it's also become a center of devotion to St. John Henry Newman, with Masses on his feast day on October 9 and during the annual Heritage Month.

But also, St. John's Chapel and Sacred Heart Hall are strongly associated with Father Kapaun, with a painting in his honor at the back of the of the chapel and a case filled with memorabilia from his ordination outside the in hall. 

Because of my decades long devotion to Saint John Henry Newman and growing devotion to Servant of God Emil Joseph Kapaun, I've meditated a little since Saturday on the lives of these two men and what they have in common. 

On first glance, you might think not much: an English convert of the Victorian age and a Bohemian farm boy from Kansas?

But they were both called to serve the People of God--Newman's long life was spent in ministry from a young age first in the Church of England and then sacramentally in the Catholic Church; Kapaun's short life was spent in service to the Catholic Church as an altar server, seminarian, deacon, priest and chaplain. 

Both were assigned by their bishops to serve a certain community: Newman at first was asked to reach out to those Tractarians who remained in the Church of England to help them become Catholics (his Anglican Difficulties and his constant correspondence and counsel with those who were thinking about becoming Catholic); Father Kapaun to the Bohemian communities of St. John Nepomucene Church in Pilsen, Kansas and then at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Timken, Kansas (now in the Diocese of Dodge City).

While Father Kapaun gave his life up for the men in the prison camp, serving them in both spiritual and physical ways--which makes him extraordinary and is the basis of his Cause for Canonization--as an Oratorian priest in Birmingham, England, we know that Father Newman served the poor in that industrial city--especially during a cholera outbreak in nearby Bilston in September, 1849--as Pope Benedict XVI commented at the Beatification Mass on September 19, 2010:

While it is John Henry Newman’s intellectual legacy that has understandably received most attention in the vast literature devoted to his life and work, I prefer on this occasion to conclude with a brief reflection on his life as a priest, a pastor of souls. The warmth and humanity underlying his appreciation of the pastoral ministry is beautifully expressed in another of his famous sermons: “Had Angels been your priests, my brethren, they could not have condoled with you, sympathized with you, have had compassion on you, felt tenderly for you, and made allowances for you, as we can; they could not have been your patterns and guides, and have led you on from your old selves into a new life, as they can who come from the midst of you” (“Men, not Angels: the Priests of the Gospel”, Discourses to Mixed Congregations, 3). He lived out that profoundly human vision of priestly ministry in his devoted care for the people of Birmingham during the years that he spent at the Oratory he founded, visiting the sick and the poor, comforting the bereaved, caring for those in prison.

Obviously, it's in that care for souls, souls and bodies, in their assigned congregations and beyond, that these two priests and holy men share the greatest link. But while Father Kapaun was not called to a life of study and teaching, even though Bishop Mark K. Carroll sent him to the Catholic University of America to earn a Master's degree in Education, and so can't "compete" with Doctor Newman (honored by Pope Pius IX and Trinity College with that title) they both were both students of the Word and of Catholic Faith.

Servant of God Emil J. Kapaun, pray for us!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!