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From Fr. Klonowski -- In the beginning of September, Fr. Rosing hosted two listening sessions regarding the present scandal in the Church. During both sessions, the question of seminary formation in the Diocese of Cleveland today was raised. Because many in attendance were unfamiliar with the seminary process, he asked that I, a recent graduate of both of our diocesan seminaries, describe the seminary program to those in attendance. Many found my description to be helpful, and so Fr. Rosing asked that I write a brief synopsis of seminary formation for the entire parish.

In 1992, Pope John Paul II promulgated an apostolic exhortation, Pastores dabo vobis (I will give you shepherds), concerning the formation of priests. In it, he outlined four “pillars” of priestly formation: human, spiritual, intellectual, and pastoral. The seminary is charged with forming men for the priesthood in a holistic way, and not merely academically. Importantly,  the pope notes that human formation is the basis of all priestly formation. More than classes alone, the seminary today is a formation program. Looking to Jesus the High Priest, true God and true man, the seminary today takes an integral approach which seeks to form the whole man for priestly service.

Our diocesan seminaries, Borromeo Seminary and St. Mary Seminary, are both located within our diocese; this allows the Cleveland seminarians to live, to work, and to build relationships in the diocese which they might one day serve as a priest. The seminarians come to know many Cleveland priests and laypeople throughout their time in the seminary. The undergraduate seminary, Borromeo, is academically affiliated with John Carroll University, while the major seminary, St. Mary, is a fully accredited graduate school of theology.

Human Formation: Before a man is accepted into the undergraduate program, he must complete a psychological exam, receive letters of recommendation from his pastor and others, and interview with members of the seminary faculty. Entrance into Borromeo does not guarantee entrance into St. Mary, and the application process for St. Mary includes two more separate psychological exams and further letters and interviews. Once accepted, the seminarian is assigned a faculty formation advisor with whom he meets at least monthly to discuss his growth in each of the four pillars. Each year, the seminarian composes a self-evaluation which he submits to the faculty, and he is evaluated by the entire seminary faculty who vote on whether he should proceed in the program. The faculty takes an active interest in, among other things, the seminarian’s social interactions, friendships, presence at meals, prayer life, pastoral work, and relationship with the community as a whole. The seminary faculty is composed of women and men, priests, religious, and lay.

When I was in the seminary, the faculty frequently addressed the abuse crisis of 2002. Every seminarian is VIRTUS trained, and it was not uncommon to hold discussions, both formal and informal, about the protection of children, appropriate boundaries, and the virtue of chastity. Affective, sexual, and social maturity are absolute requirements for candidates for the priesthood.

Spiritual Formation:  Every day, the seminary celebrates communally the Liturgy of the Hours and Holy Mass. Sacramental Confession, devotions, reflections, and retreat opportunities, as well as spirituality sessions and small group discussions are a constitutive element of the seminary year. The seminarian also meets with a spiritual director at least monthly.

Intellectual Formation: Students at Borromeo are required to take at least thirty hours of philosophy as they pursue a Bachelor’s degree. Students at St. Mary pursue a Master of Divinity degree, whose capstone project is a synthesis of the whole of seminary formation. Some students are invited to pursue a Master of Arts in Theology as well.

Pastoral Formation: Yearly, each seminarian receives an off-site field education assignment at a hospital, school, jail, parish, nursing home or another institution. The seminarian works within our diocese under the supervision of a priest or a lay expert in the field. These supervisors evaluate the seminarian on his pastoral skill. The field education program also includes ministry-specific training. During the third year of formation at St. Mary, the seminarian lives and works at a parish for an entire academic year as he is evaluated by the pastor, parochial vicar(s), parish staff, and parish community.

I hope this brief overview of current priestly formation has helped you to understand what happens at our diocesan seminaries today. If you have any questions, Fr. Rosing, Fr. Mike and I are always willing to listen. Please keep our seminarians in your prayers.

Fr. Kevin Klonowski

We acknowledge that there are many concerns and questions regarding what is going on in the Catholic Church these days with the scandal of abuse and leadership. Recently Bishop Robert Barron, Auxiliary Bishop of Los Angeles, produced 2 brief videos that we recommend you watch and share with others who also might be confused and concerned.  The videos are linked below…

Bishop Barron “Why remain Catholic with so much scandal?”

Bishop Q & A on the scandal

If you or anyone would like to or need to discuss this situation in our Church, please contact us by phone at 330-688-6412 and the extension below or by email (click on one of our names below).

Let us keep those abused and their families, holy and courageous leaders and our faithful response in our prayers.

Fr. Paul Rosing ext 215
pjrosing@holyfamilystow.org
Fr. Mike Ausperk ext 217
mausperk@gmail.com
Fr. Kevin Klonowski ext 223
klonowski@holyfamilystow.org
Deacon John Green
john@cafeoplay.com

On August 20, 2018 Pope Francis issued a letter to the Church which we wanted to share with you.  It is reprinted below.  Please pray for victims of abuse and those who help support them and their healing.

Fr. Paul Rosing

Fr. Mike Ausperk

Fr. Kevin Klonowski

 LETTER OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS 
TO THE PEOPLE OF GOD

 “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it” (1 Cor 12:26). These words of Saint Paul forcefully echo in my heart as I acknowledge once more the suffering endured by many minors due to sexual abuse, the abuse of power and the abuse of conscience perpetrated by a significant number of clerics and consecrated persons. Crimes that inflict deep wounds of pain and powerlessness, primarily among the victims, but also in their family members and in the larger community of believers and nonbelievers alike. Looking back to the past, no effort to beg pardon and to seek to repair the harm done will ever be sufficient. Looking ahead to the future, no effort must be spared to create a culture able to prevent such situations from happening, but also to prevent the possibility of their being covered up and perpetuated. The pain of the victims and their families is also our pain, and so it is urgent that we once more reaffirm our commitment to ensure the protection of minors and of vulnerable adults.

 If one member suffers…

In recent days, a report was made public which detailed the experiences of at least a thousand survivors, victims of sexual abuse, the abuse of power and of conscience at the hands of priests over a period of approximately seventy years. Even though it can be said that most of these cases belong to the past, nonetheless as time goes on we have come to know the pain of many of the victims. We have realized that these wounds never disappear and that they require us forcefully to condemn these atrocities and join forces in uprooting this culture of death; these wounds never go away. The heart-wrenching pain of these victims, which cries out to heaven, was long ignored, kept quiet or silenced. But their outcry was more powerful than all the measures meant to silence it, or sought even to resolve it by decisions that increased its gravity by falling into complicity. The Lord heard that cry and once again showed us on which side he stands. Mary’s song is not mistaken and continues quietly to echo throughout history. For the Lord remembers the promise he made to our fathers: “he has scattered the proud in their conceit; he has cast down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty” (Lk 1:51-53). We feel shame when we realize that our style of life has denied, and continues to deny, the words we recite.

 With shame and repentance, we acknowledge as an ecclesial community that we were not where we should have been, that we did not act in a timely manner, realizing the magnitude and the gravity of the damage done to so many lives. We showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them. I make my own the words of the then Cardinal Ratzinger when, during the Way of the Cross composed for Good Friday 2005, he identified with the cry of pain of so many victims and exclaimed: “How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to [Christ]! How much pride, how much self-complacency! Christ’s betrayal by his disciples, their unworthy reception of his body and blood, is certainly the greatest suffering endured by the Redeemer; it pierces his heart. We can only call to him from the depths of our hearts: Kyrie eleison – Lord, save us! (cf. Mt 8:25)” (Ninth Station).

 … all suffer together with it

The extent and the gravity of all that has happened requires coming to grips with this reality in a comprehensive and communal way. While it is important and necessary on every journey of conversion to acknowledge the truth of what has happened, in itself this is not enough. Today we are challenged as the People of God to take on the pain of our brothers and sisters wounded in their flesh and in their spirit. If, in the past, the response was one of omission, today we want solidarity, in the deepest and most challenging sense, to become our way of forging present and future history. And this in an environment where conflicts, tensions and above all the victims of every type of abuse can encounter an outstretched hand to protect them and rescue them from their pain (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 228). Such solidarity demands that we in turn condemn whatever endangers the integrity of any person. A solidarity that summons us to fight all forms of corruption, especially spiritual corruption. The latter is “a comfortable and self-satisfied form of blindness. Everything then appears acceptable: deception, slander, egotism and other subtle forms of self-centeredness, for ‘even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light’ (2 Cor 11:14)” (Gaudete et Exsultate, 165). Saint Paul’s exhortation to suffer with those who suffer is the best antidote against all our attempts to repeat the words of Cain: “Am I my brother's keeper?” (Gen 4:9).

 I am conscious of the effort and work being carried out in various parts of the world to come up with the necessary means to ensure the safety and protection of the integrity of children and of vulnerable adults, as well as implementing zero tolerance and ways of making all those who perpetrate or cover up these crimes accountable. We have delayed in applying these actions and sanctions that are so necessary, yet I am confident that they will help to guarantee a greater culture of care in the present and future.

Together with those efforts, every one of the baptized should feel involved in the ecclesial and social change that we so greatly need. This change calls for a personal and communal conversion that makes us see things as the Lord does. For as Saint John Paul II liked to say: “If we have truly started out anew from the contemplation of Christ, we must learn to see him especially in the faces of those with whom he wished to be identified” (Novo Millennio Ineunte, 49). To see things as the Lord does, to be where the Lord wants us to be, to experience a conversion of heart in his presence. To do so, prayer and penance will help. I invite the entire holy faithful People of God to a penitential exercise of prayer and fasting, following the Lord’s command.[1] This can awaken our conscience and arouse our solidarity and commitment to a culture of care that says “never again” to every form of abuse.

 It is impossible to think of a conversion of our activity as a Church that does not include the active participation of all the members of God’s People. Indeed, whenever we have tried to replace, or silence, or ignore, or reduce the People of God to small elites, we end up creating communities, projects, theological approaches, spiritualities and structures without roots, without memory, without faces, without bodies and ultimately, without lives.[2] This is clearly seen in a peculiar way of understanding the Church’s authority, one common in many communities where sexual abuse and the abuse of power and conscience have occurred. Such is the case with clericalism, an approach that “not only nullifies the character of Christians, but also tends to diminish and undervalue the baptismal grace that the Holy Spirit has placed in the heart of our people”.[3] Clericalism, whether fostered by priests themselves or by lay persons, leads to an excision in the ecclesial body that supports and helps to perpetuate many of the evils that we are condemning today. To say “no” to abuse is to say an emphatic “no” to all forms of clericalism.

It is always helpful to remember that “in salvation history, the Lord saved one people. We are never completely ourselves unless we belong to a people. That is why no one is saved alone, as an isolated individual. Rather, God draws us to himself, taking into account the complex fabric of interpersonal relationships present in the human community. God wanted to enter into the life and history of a people” (Gaudete et Exsultate, 6). Consequently, the only way that we have to respond to this evil that has darkened so many lives is to experience it as a task regarding all of us as the People of God. This awareness of being part of a people and a shared history will enable us to acknowledge our past sins and mistakes with a penitential openness that can allow us to be renewed from within. Without the active participation of all the Church’s members, everything being done to uproot the culture of abuse in our communities will not be successful in generating the necessary dynamics for sound and realistic change. The penitential dimension of fasting and prayer will help us as God’s People to come before the Lord and our wounded brothers and sisters as sinners imploring forgiveness and the grace of shame and conversion. In this way, we will come up with actions that can generate resources attuned to the Gospel. For “whenever we make the effort to return to the source and to recover the original freshness of the Gospel, new avenues arise, new paths of creativity open up, with different forms of expression, more eloquent signs and words with new meaning for today’s world” (Evangelii Gaudium, 11).

 It is essential that we, as a Church, be able to acknowledge and condemn, with sorrow and shame, the atrocities perpetrated by consecrated persons, clerics, and all those entrusted with the mission of watching over and caring for those most vulnerable. Let us beg forgiveness for our own sins and the sins of others. An awareness of sin helps us to acknowledge the errors, the crimes and the wounds caused in the past and allows us, in the present, to be more open and committed along a journey of renewed conversion.

Likewise, penance and prayer will help us to open our eyes and our hearts to other people’s sufferings and to overcome the thirst for power and possessions that are so often the root of those evils. May fasting and prayer open our ears to the hushed pain felt by children, young people and the disabled. A fasting that can make us hunger and thirst for justice and impel us to walk in the truth, supporting all the judicial measures that may be necessary. A fasting that shakes us up and leads us to be committed in truth and charity with all men and women of good will, and with society in general, to combatting all forms of the abuse of power, sexual abuse and the abuse of conscience.

 In this way, we can show clearly our calling to be “a sign and instrument of communion with God and of the unity of the entire human race” (Lumen Gentium, 1).

“If one member suffers, all suffer together with it”, said Saint Paul. By an attitude of prayer and penance, we will become attuned as individuals and as a community to this exhortation, so that we may grow in the gift of compassion, in justice, prevention and reparation. Mary chose to stand at the foot of her Son’s cross. She did so unhesitatingly, standing firmly by Jesus’ side. In this way, she reveals the way she lived her entire life. When we experience the desolation caused by these ecclesial wounds, we will do well, with Mary, “to insist more upon prayer”, seeking to grow all the more in love and fidelity to the Church (SAINT IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA, Spiritual Exercises, 319). She, the first of the disciples, teaches all of us as disciples how we are to halt before the sufferings of the innocent, without excuses or cowardice. To look to Mary is to discover the model of a true follower of Christ.

 May the Holy Spirit grant us the grace of conversion and the interior anointing needed to express before these crimes of abuse our compunction and our resolve courageously to combat them.

 Vatican City, 20 August 2018

 FRANCIS

[1] “But this kind [of demon] does not come out except by prayer and fasting” (Mt 17:21).

[2] Cf. Letter to the Pilgrim People of God in Chile (31 May 2018).

[3] Letter to Cardinal Marc Ouellet, President of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America (19 March 2016).

Bishop Nelson Perez of the Diocese of Cleveland has asked us to communicate his and Cardinal Daniel DiNardo’s (President of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops) statements on the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report on abuse.  T

Please join us in continuing to pray for victims of abuse, their families, those who work with them for healing and our Church and Holy Family Parish.

Fr. Paul Rosing

Fr. Mike Ausperk

Fr. Kevin Klonowski

Statement from Bishop Nelson Perez

Statement from US Conference of Catholic Bishops

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