Archive for the ‘Pastoral Ministry’ Category

Jesuit Father Jeff Putthoff (right) with a cross planted for a Camden, N.J., homicide victim.

Jesuit Father Jeff Putthoff ministers in Camden, N.J., a city that experienced a record-breaking number of homicides in 2012. “I have learned that poverty is not pretty, nor is it romantic. The traumatic experiences of violence, abuse and endemic poverty deeply wound the people of Camden,” says Fr. Putthoff.

Fr. Putthoff founded and runs Hopeworks ‘N Camden, which trains youth in technology and helps them get back to school and away from the violence that plagues their hometown.

Among the 67 killed in Camden in 2012, 34 were younger than age 30; 11 were teenagers; one was 2 years old and another was 6 years old. Fr. Putthoff was one of the organizers of a new group, Stop the Trauma, Violence and Murder, which has a Facebook page documenting both the ongoing violence in the city and activities to bring attention to the problem, including painting and planting of crosses for victims.

“Camden is a place that is very bloody and disfigured, and it bothers us fundamentally to look at it because if we acknowledge it as disfigured, then we have to do something about it,” Fr. Putthoff told the National Catholic Reporter. “The alternative, what most do, is avert our gaze and find ways to justify it. We either make it invisible or we blame people for it.”

Fr. Putthoff and the staff of Hopeworks understand that changing lives go beyond teaching new skills. It also means they must help the youth to see possibilities that would have been previously unimaginable.

Fr. Putthoff  said that even many from the program who “succeeded,” by moving on to college or to good jobs, often sabotaged that success by acting out inappropriately under stressful circumstances.

“What’s important is recognizing that even if we had no crosses, we’d still be saying, ‘Stop the trauma,’ because people are living an existence that is only about survival and not thriving,” Fr. Putthoff said. “They learn a whole set of behaviors to help them survive, but lamentably, those behaviors don’t help them thrive.”

The Hopeworks staff is currently undergoing a two-year training program to be certified in “trauma-informed delivery of services.”

“We believe that we’re operating more and more out of a model of trauma where our youth basically have a form of PTSD and their survival mechanism doesn’t allow them to actually move forward,” Fr. Putthoff said.

For more on Fr. Putthoff’s ministry in Camden, visit the National Catholic Reporter and the Jesuit Curia’s Social Justice blog.

The Jesuits’ Gesu Church in downtown Miami, the city’s oldest Catholic church, was recently renovated, and the pastor says the aesthetic improvement is only half the story. “We have always wanted to revive our presence in the heart of downtown because the area itself has been developed and the Catholic Church was not going to fall behind,” says Jesuit Father Eddy Alvarez, Gesu’s pastor.

The iconic downtown church dates to 1922, and in the last few months the building has gone through a transformation that’s included restoring the bell tower, painting the facade with new colors, revitalizing the interior and adding the emblem of the Society of Jesus. “We needed to modernize and attract new Catholics who have moved to the area,” says Fr. Alvarez.

Because the church is so close to the ocean, the salt residue and humidity had taken a toll on the building’s frame with cracks and other forms of dangerous deterioration, according to Jesuit Father Eduardo Barrios.

Today, there are three Jesuit priests working at the parish, which has seen growth and diversification of its parishioners, particularly following an influx of young professionals to the area.

“It now has a fresher look while maintaining its original beauty,” says parishioner Alberto Carrillo of the renovated church. “It’s very inviting if you are Catholic.”

To reaffirm the Gesu’s Jesuit identity, the IHS emblem — derived from the first three letters of the Greek name of Jesus and featured in the Society’s crest — has been emphasized throughout the church. IHS is welded to the bars on doors and windows and is also painted on the panels containing the Creed along the Stations of the Cross.

Read the full article and see more images at the Miami Herald website.

Jesuit Father Bob Fabing has been ministering to families for over 40 years. The multi-talented Fr. Fabing is also a composer of liturgical music, a poet, an author and the founder and director of the Jesuit Institute for Family Life International Network (JIFLiNet.com), a worldwide organization of some 80 institutes providing marriage counseling and family therapy in the U.S., Central America, Europe, Asia and Africa.

Fr. Fabing’s family counseling ministry began in 1961, a year after he joined the Society of Jesus. “Christ called me to stand with the afflicted suffering mothers, fathers and children in homes in need of peace,” Fr. Fabing says.

His call to be with suffering families was as strong and as unrelenting as his vocation to the Society of Jesus. “I joined the Society of Jesus as I couldn’t live with myself anymore resisting Christ,” he explains. “I finally said ‘yes’!”

In addition, Fr. Fabing is the founder of the 30-Day Retreat Program in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola at the Jesuit Retreat Center in Los Altos, Calif., where he lives.

Fr. Fabing has published several books, including a new book of poetry, “With Roses for All.” He says, “Poetry is absorbing. Poetry is engaging. Poetry reaches into the ability of play. Poetry calls out to human freedom by speaking  to heart and mind together at the same moment unraveling human nature before one has the time to stop its invasion.

“What good could come from that?”Fr.  Fabing asks. “The gift of realizing that one is made for more than work. The gift of experiencing oneself as interacting with the world of beauty. The gift of being restored to the person you always knew you were.”

Fr. Fabing says working on these calls each day – marriage counseling, spiritual direction and music – keeps him balanced.

For more, find him on the web at JIFLiNet.com, JRClosaltos.org, YouTube,  Facebook, LinkedIn, ocp.org, iTunes, amazon.com and Kaufmannpublishing.com.

Jesuit Father James Martin offered this reflection on “The mystery of pain, the solace of faith” in the New York Daily News after the tragic Newtown school shooting on Dec. 14:

I write these lines within hours of hearing about the horrific shootings in Connecticut, and I write them from a retreat house in New England, a place of prayer. I also write them at the invitation of this newspaper.

The question on so many minds and in so many hearts is: Why?

It is an age-old question, one that believers have been asking, struggling with, raging at, and weeping over, for many centuries. Why would God allow something like this to happen? It is what theologians and saints have called the “mystery of evil.” It was asked in another form recently, in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, when many lost their lives.

In this case, however, and in all cases involving children — especially the violent deaths of children — the question takes on even more poignancy and greater urgency.

As a believer I need to say this: There is no satisfactory or adequate answer to that question. It is, to use another ancient phrase, a mystery. That word is often used as way of avoiding complex problems, but in this case it is true, and the thoughtful believer knows this in his or her heart: There is no answer that will take away our grief or fully explain how a good God could permit this.

Anyone who tells you that he or she has an answer to that question (for example: it is a punishment for our sins; it is the result of a vengeful God; it proves there is no God; or it demonstrates meaninglessness in the universe) does not offer a real answer. For no answer will satisfy in the wake of such agony.

Yet, as a believer, I also need to say this: That it is a mystery does not mean that there aren’t perspectives that can help the believing person in times of tragedy and sadness. For me, there are two things have helped me in facing tragedy:

First, as a Christian, I believe that violence, suffering and death are never the last word. God promises us eternal life, and will give us that life just as he gave it to his Son, who also died a violent death. “Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them,” is the prayer spoken at Catholic funerals. God, I believe, has already granted all those who were killed eternal rest and perpetual light.

This does not take away our sorrow, but it can offer us hope for those who have gone before us. It also offers us the hope of being reunited with our loved ones in the fullness of time.

The second thing, or person, I turn to is Jesus. We do not have a God who is removed from our sufferings. When Jesus went to the tomb of his good friend Lazarus, whom Jesus would soon raise from the dead, he wept. Why? Because he loved Lazarus, as he loved Lazarus’s sisters, Mary and Martha.

Jesus understands what sorrow is. Jesus understands pain. Jesus, I believe, weeps with us. Our God is not an intellectual abstraction or a philosophical theory, ours is a God who has lived a human life. This helps me during times of sadness. Jesus is with us in our pain, not standing far off.

The two perspectives are really one. The God who weeps with us also promises us eternal life. And the God who promises us eternal life weeps with us. For our part, we can work to end violence, to console those who remain and to build a more loving society.

For those who are not Christian but who are believers, like my Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters, I would not presume to offer a perspective, but I might still say that we all believe in a God who loves us, who is love, and who therefore weeps with us. On this we might begin to find some common understanding. For those who are not believers, I might say that in the wake of such horrendous tragedies, our hearts are called to compassion, to support the families and friends of the victims; and our sense of morality impels us to work for an end to such appalling violence.

There may not be answers that will satisfy, but for the believer there is God, who is sorrowful with us, who offers us eternal life, and who moves us, through our hearts, to build a more loving and compassionate society.

—New York Daily News; image via Regis University

Jesuit Father Max Oliva has built a ministry that focuses on ethical decision-making in the workplace in a locale not often associated with ethics: Las Vegas.

“People are fascinated with a priest that works with businesspeople on ethics,” Fr. Oliva told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Through his Ethics in the Marketplace ministry, Fr. Oliva offers talks, seminars and individual sessions to businesspeople who are trying to sort through dilemmas they encounter in the office, such as how to lay off people out of necessity or handle a contract dispute.

“My experience is there are not a lot of people you can talk to about this stuff,” Fr. Oliva said. “You don’t want to talk to your boss. You can’t talk to a pastor because he is overwhelmed with other things. You don’t want to take it home and make it a big problem.” That’s where Fr. Oliva, a Jesuit with a background in business, steps in to help.

When Fr. Oliva graduated from Santa Clara University in 1961 with a B.A. marketing and business, he had job offers at three family-owned businesses. Instead he chose to enter the Jesuits. He later received an MBA, but most of his work as a Jesuit was in parish or native ministry until ten years ago.

In 2002, he founded Spirituality at Work, which is now Ethics in the Marketplace, after reading a Fortune magazine article on religion in the workplace.

Fr. Oliva ended up in the Las Vegas area after answering a call to help out with a shortage of priests on a part-time basis in 2008 and is now there full time. “My provincial (Jesuit superior) says I’m our missionary in Nevada,” he says.

Since coming to Vegas, Fr. Oliva hasn’t had much contact with business on the Las Vegas Strip. “When I first came here, I reached out by sending letters to Strip executives and never heard back from anybody,” Fr. Oliva says.

“I hope my being here will draw people closer to God and help them be better people in the workplace. I hope that what I have to offer helps to deal with serious issues both personal and work-related,” says Fr. Oliva of his goals.

Read the full interview with Fr. Oliva at the Las Vegas Review-Journal website.