Denver, Colo., Mar 8, 2020 / 04:00 am (CNA).- One of the most prominent people in the life of Jesus Christ, St. Joseph, his foster father, is also one of the quietest. And as such, he can be one of the most overlooked people in the Bible and in the Holy Family.
But Fr. Donald Calloway is hoping to change that, because he thinks the world needs St. Joseph now more than ever. Calloway told CNA that he thinks people today are confused about meaning.
People often approach the priest “so confused about the times we’re living in when it comes to marriage and family, and you’ve got all this gender ideology stuff today. People are just really confused about what it means to be a man, what it means to be a woman.”
Because he has personally had a devotion to St. Joseph for a long time, Calloway said he started wondering several years ago whether there was a consecration to the foster-father of Jesus, similar to the popular consecration to Mary by St. Louis de Montfort.
If such a consecration already existed, Calloway wanted to promote it – he thought St. Joseph’s intercession and example were the antidotes to the confusion people were experiencing. But when he asked at the Vatican and various religious orders, he found that a consecration to St. Joseph did not yet exist in the Church.
“They said, no Father, that’s a great idea. But they said, no, we’ve never heard of anything like that. And so I said, well, I’m going to do it then,” Calloway said.
For the next three years, Calloway started researching, praying, and compiling a consecration to St. Joseph, the earthly husband of Mary and the foster-father of Jesus.
Because of the popularity of the Marian consecration, Calloway said he’s had Catholics ask him whether the consecration to St. Joseph would somehow take away from their consecration to Mary.
“The word (consecration) technically means setting something aside for a holy purpose. We consecrate altars, for example, because we’re going to use it for Mass. Or we consecrate people we have in religious communities and such,” he said.
“So when we consecrate ourselves to Mary or Joseph, we’re basically entrusting ourselves to their spiritual care because they’re our spiritual parents. …and the answer is no, because we’re not members of a one-parent spiritual family,” he said.
In his book, Calloway writes that consecration to St. Joseph means “that you acknowledge that he is your spiritual father, and you want to be like him. To show it, you entrust yourself entirely to his paternal care so that he can lovingly help you acquire his virtues and become holy…St. Joseph, in turn, will give those consecrated to him his loving attention, protection and guidance.”
The first person to entrust themself to the spiritual care of Joseph and Mary was actually Jesus, he added.
“And so we give ourselves to their care, just like Jesus did when he was growing up. He lived under their roof, he was under their care, and he didn’t just go to his mom, you know, he went to his dad as well to St Joseph. So that’s what it is, entrusting ourselves to St. Joseph’s spiritual fatherhood to help us grow in virtue and closer to Christ.”
The consecration to St. Joseph also shares some similarities to the consecration to Mary by Louis DeMonfort, Calloway added like the length (33 days) and the general format, which consists of daily reflections on the life and virtues of St. Joseph, as well as special prayers.
“In the 18th century, when (DeMonfort) came up with his method, he made it 33 days, which is really good (because) if it was only like five or nine days, it’s not enough, you’re not going to really be able to cover a lot of material,” Calloway said.
On the other hand, “if it’s like three months long, people are going to be like, yeah, this is too much. So one month is a good amount of time. On a daily basis you go through some readings, you unpack some of the titles, the honors, the privileges associated with St. Joseph… and then you end every day with some prayers. And by the end of that, you’re like, wow, I really know this guy now. I really feel that I want him as part of my spiritual life.”
Like the Marian consecration, the St. Joseph consecration can be done individually or within a small group.
John De Guzman, a seminarian for the diocese of Raleigh, North Carolina, told CNA that he found out about the consecration to St. Joseph through Fr. Calloway’s social media pages. He started doing the consecration by himself, and then was joined by one of his fellow seminarians.
When he spoke with CNA, he was on the 10th day of the consecration, and is set to finish on March 19, the feast of St. Joseph.
De Guzman said he was inspired to do the consecration because he felt that St. Joseph was the member of the Holy Family with whom he was the least familiar.
“They are the perfect model of a family, and why would I not want to get closer to the father? I’m getting closer to the mother. I’m getting closer to the son. Well, then why not get closer to the father, make this a perfect trinity?” he said.
De Guzman said he thinks the consecration has been so popular because the world is desperately looking for examples of manhood, fatherhood, and loving families.
Many of the issues that adults deal with today stem from some kind of instability in their own family of origin, he added.
“It can stem from tensions with the father, or a lack of a father, or the lack of some spiritual and emotional intimacy…the lack of human interaction and relationship with a father,” he said.
The consecration, on the other hand, is bringing to light “that Saint Joseph is your human father that you can really develop a relationship with,” he said.
“Saint Joseph was not immaculately conceived. Saint Joseph was not a perfect human being,” he said.
“If anything, Saint Joseph probably was in one of the more difficult situations of his time, being married to the most beautiful woman out there, (his foster) son is the Lord. For me, that would probably be a playground for temptations where the devil can attack. But Saint Joseph triumphs. And the beautiful thing is he’s not God, so there’s that human relationship, the human aspect that you can connect to.”
Robert Morgan and Sarah Kalonick, who are engaged to be married in June, told CNA that the consecration has helped them prepare for marriage and family life.
In their regular marriage prep, they are given a mentor couple with whom they can meet and ask questions about married life. Kalonick said they’ve started to look to Joseph and Mary as their “other mentor couple.”
“(The consecration) really, in a very accessible and simple way, lets you focus on this hidden Saint,” she said. “What are his qualities? What are his virtues? Who is he?” Like De Guzman, Morgan said he found it easier to relate to St. Joseph than to Mary when it came to the Holy Family.
“I think some of it is trying to reclaim a masculinity that’s been lost over the years in our faith,” he said. “And also as a man, it’s a little easier for me to get the perspective of St. Joseph in Jesus’s story, than it is for me to look from Mary’s side of things.”
On the other hand, Kalonick said that as a woman, growing closer to St. Joseph has been a “healing experience” for her in light of some of the hurt she experienced in past relationships with men.
“It helps heal and form my own perspective of (good relationships),” she said. “Here is a man who is pure-hearted, and virtuous, and loving the Lord, and loving this lady.”
Kalonick said the point is not to “idealize” St. Joseph or to set “false expectations” of real men, but to “get to know the realness of Joseph and who a man can be, who he is, what man is, and to start looking for that in the relationships that you seek out.”
As someone studying for the priesthood, De Guzman said the consecration has inspired him to learn more about the earthly father to whom Jesus himself was entrusted.
“Christ was consecrated to these two, Joseph and Mary were his father and his mother here on earth. Jesus grew through the fatherhood of St. Joseph. For me, I’m studying to be a priest (and) as a Christian, I want to be more like Christ. What better way to be more like Christ than to develop the same kind of love and relationship with his father?”
Like the Marian consecration, the consecration to St. Joseph is becoming very popular among Catholics – even though it was just published on January 1.
“So far people are loving it, and parishes and places that are doing it, they’re loving it,” Calloway said. “It’s unbelievable…we almost can’t keep up with the demand.”
Calloway said he thinks part of the reason the consecration has been “flying off the shelves” is because the world is starving for good fathers. According to 2017 U.S. Census Bureau data, more than one in four children are growing up in a fatherless home.
“We’ve got a lot of people with a lot of father wounds and absent fathers,” he said. “They don’t know what a father is and they’ve never experienced their loving father or a father who’s present in their lives.”
Besides a crisis of fatherhood in families, the Church itself is also experiencing a crisis of spiritual fathers today, Calloway said, referring to the priests and bishops and cardinals who have been found guilty of both “sinful and criminal things” in recent sex abuse scandals.
“(They’ve) hurt a lot of people caused a lot of scandal,” he said. “And so people right now are thirsting for a good father.”
“Part of what I would like the fruit of this to be is the affirmation that we do have a loving father in St. Joseph, and he’s never going to hurt us. He’s there for us and a good father who wants his children to make it to heaven. And he’s ultimately, like Our Lady, not going to point to himself, but point us to Jesus and help us to grow.”
Another aspect of St. Joseph’s sainthood that may not be well known are the various patronages and titles he holds, Calloway added, and each day of the consecration is dedicated to one of these.
Perhaps one of the only well-known St. Joseph traditions, that leans more superstitious than spiritual, is the burying a St. Joseph statue upside down in the yard, with the belief that he will then help one’s house sell faster. “It’s kind of spiritual bribery,” Calloway said.
“They’ll say, ‘I’m not going to turn you right-side up until you sell my house. Well what kind of craziness is that?” Rather, there are much more profound things for which St. Joseph’s intercession can be invoked, such as for a good death.
“He’s the patron of the dying, because the tradition says that when he died, he died in the arms of Jesus and Mary. You won’t get a better death than that, so when you pray to him for a happy death…we pray that we would be embraced by our Lord and our Lady,” Calloway noted.
St. Joseph is also the patron of virgins, Calloway said, because he never had marital relations with Mary.
“We live in a world that’s just filled with lust and perversions of every kind, and we’ve got this pornographic plague right now. And I think that’s something that we can look to him for as well. Not just for virgins, but also for marriages, for couples to be chaste within their marriage…and to have that dignity for each other and that respect for each other.”
Some of Calloway’s other favorite titles for St. Joseph include Pillar of Families and Glory of Domestic life, he said, but the “money title” is: Terror of Demons.
“Because you know, a lot of times you look at (artwork of St. Joseph) and it doesn’t look too intimidating. He looks old with the cane,” Calloway said. “But the reality is he wasn’t some old man. And that’s really not a cane – it’s like a staff of a warrior.”
“Satan knows the power that (St. Joseph) has because he has such familiarity and intimacy with Christ. Just like when our Lady asks Jesus to do something, she’s asking as his mother, well when Joseph asks, he’s asking Jesus as his father, and so there’s power in that petition and Satan is terrified that.”
Besides the 33 days of reflections, the Consecration to St. Joseph book contains reflections on the “wonders of St. Joseph,” which include descriptions of miraculous places and events attributed to St. Joseph’s intercession. The book also includes additional prayers, such as the Litany of St. Joseph, the Holy Cloak novena, and other prayers from saints and popes dedicated to St. Joseph, as well as guides for those leading small groups with the consecration.
The website for the consecration to St. Joseph also contains a chart which shows when one can begin the 33-day consecration in order for it to end on specific feast days or holy days related to St. Joseph.
Consecration books can be ordered through the website as well – but order quickly, they are going fast, Calloway noted. De Guzman said he would encourage anyone interested in growing closer to St. Joseph to do the consecration, or any other devotion that would bring them closer to the saint.
Even though the saint is known for his silence and humility “it seems like now is the time for his fatherhood to really shine in our lives, and so I would encourage people to really respond to that.”
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If the Catholic Church and its agencies want to help immigrants, that’s fine. Just do it with money that belongs to the Catholic Church. Tax dollars confiscated from taxpayers to do the work of the Church should end…NOW!
Nope. No amnesty for those who entered illegally. Reagan did that with the expectation that the border would be secured. Democrats flooded the country with illegals again. They all go back. All of them.
The Catholic Church applauded and abetted the entry into the United States of people who knowingly broke the law by how they arrived. The Catholic Church even profitted greatly in their act. Now our bishops want to say, “Well, since they’re already here, why not let them stay.” But arriving here as a lawbreaker is not the way to start life in a new country. Rather, I’d propose that anyone here illegally and who has committed no other crimes since arriving, should be asked to voluntarily leave the country. They can be fingerprinted on the way out or use that photo ID system that we citizens are subjected to when we leave or re-enter the USA. They will be repatriated to their country of origin where they can re-apply for residency on an expedited basis. Their entry, then, into the USA can be normalized and they can once again resume life in a country where laws mean something. Acting on emotions is never a way to apply the law.
How about: if you have been deported for illegally and grossly overstaying a Visa or illegally entering, then you do not get to enter legally. If you deport yourself, there’ll be no record of deportation, and you can go through the normal process. (Possibly I’m making incorrect assumptions about illegal immigration processes) Exceptions for those under 18. I don’t see a reason to deport children who’ve been here most of their lives.
If potential immigrants get bonus points for speaking English and knowing the American way of life, self-deported illegals should have a leg up on the rest of the applicants, assuming they tried to integrate while they were here.
Let’s remember some salient facts:
1. There are millions of illegal aliens in this country.
2. They are earning incomes off-the-books
3. They are not paying taxes
4. The rest of the hard-working American citizens are paying more than their fair share for services that taxes provide
5. In effect, this entire Illegal Immigration Industry (that the Catholic Church receives remuneration for) is STEALING FROM THEIR NEIGHBORS. Where’s the charity in that, you bishops?
It seems the Archbishop is saying , while we should secure our borders, at the same time we should normalize those who are here as undocumented IF they are living as productive law abiding people. They would then become contributing taxpayers. Judging the number of “Help Wanted” signs in every town, I would conclude that they are very much needed. If we expelled them who would pick our crops? I’m in no way suggesting that we take advantage of them and keep them permanently in a lower class, but rather that they are welcomed and allowed every opportunity to better themselves and advance their social standing. Over several centuries every wave of immigrants has started at the bottom and worked their way up. Orderly paths to citizenship should be provided. This is the American way. They wouldn’t be here in the first place if we had secure boarders. Since they are here we should allow them to legally integrate.
They entered illegally. They committed a crime. They should return.
The Vatican recently increased penalties on illegals going into Vatican City. What does the Archbishop think of that?
He should have stopped at paragraph seven.
“If President Trump is able to shut down the border successfully, making illegal entry into our country virtually impossible, does it not make more sense to create a pathway for the undocumented to be able to earn legal status?”
Honestly, no. This “pathway to citizenship” narrative is inappropriate and unacceptable. There is already a formal process for immigrants to become citizens. That process must be honored, and it must apply equally to everyone. No amnesty, no work visas, no exceptions.
I voted for J.D. Vance. I never voted for any bishop to weigh in on immigration policy. That is left for laypersons in the Church to deliberate about. Bishops should stay in their own lane.
Bishops are the Church’s official teachers on faith and morals, and government policy is partly applied morality. They have reason to weigh in. But they should be careful not to speak beyond their knowledge, as we all should.
The Church does have “an obligation to care for every person with respect and love, no matter their citizenship status.”
That includes the children of American citizens whose parents are both working, one of them working two jobs, just to be able to provide their children with the basic essentials, and still can’t do that without slowly drowning in credit card debt.
Such children don’t get to spend anywhere near enough time with their parents. They are basically being raised by the secular school system, which in many cases indoctrinates them with values contrary to the Christianity of their parents.
Why are such families in this dire situation? Because massive, out of control, unregulated immigration (open borders) has driven down wages that far.
The Church’s approach to immigration hasn’t been treating such families with “respect and love.” It has instead coldly abandoned them, leaving their vulnerable children in a terrible situation.
The difference between Archbishop Naumann’s pleas for reasonable accommodation marks the spiritual heart of a man of God, a man committed to his brother as well as faith in Christ – from the many who continue to show no compassion whatsoever in their commitment to civil law. Whereas Naumann, a staunch traditional Catholic, is not a legalist when there’s room for charity.
Idiot compassion is not genuine compassion. Render to Ceasar the things that are Ceasar’s. We are a nation of laws. Illegal aliens do not deserve compassion; they are technically criminals, so the appropriate response is deportation.
At judgment do you believe Christ will consider the difference as just or unjust?
I seem to recall a bible passage where Jesus asked His disciples to pay their tax with a coin found in the mouth of a fish. I have no recollection of Him advising civil unrest, which his disciples had initially hoped for. And I recall Him saying “render to Caesar”. Jesus never advocated breaking the civil law ( something his followers believed the Messiah would apparently do.) . I dont recall him making an allowance for illegal aliens either, some of whom commit violent crimes like rape and murder. Breaking into another nation is a crime.
Too many churchmen mistake Christianity for socialism or communism. It is not. Nor is it a sin to be a successful person or nation. Which means no one has a right to TAKE what belongs from you without your consent. The US donates foreign aid in numbers much larger than the next few nations combined. WE dont owe anyone anything. I dont recall Christianity EVER teaching that one has an obligation to stand by and be the punching bag of those with less means.
STEALING what you want is a great deal different than asking for help.
Charity belongs to God.
Illegal immigrants do not deserve compassion??
I’m all for law & order. A secure border protects everyone’s safety but I have a great deal of compassion for people brought here as children through no fault of their own. Even Gov. Rick Perry said we can be law abiding & still have a heart. We’re Catholics. We’re not 100% on one political team or the other. We can consider humane exceptions.
Whew! Good to hear your voice mrscracker. For awhile I thought compassion, even limited to hard cases had died among the faithful.
Amen, well said. I would hope that there is room for courteous and fruitful dialogue between men who are both reasonable and devout, which certainly includes both the Archbishop and the Vice-President. There is room for discussion about nuance and prudential judgements between such men, sorely lacking in, say, the endless simplistic pronouncements of the talking heads of CNN and Fox.
I don’t think disagreement on what is a reasonable way to approach illegal immigrants is necessarily evidence of legalism or a lack of compassion.
Possibly people are aware that there are only so many immigration officials, and the backlog in legal immigration applicants is years-long, sometimes over a decade. Giving illegals amnesty is not without cost to potential legal immigrants.
Fr. Morello, as multiple outlets have now reported, the USCCB has been operating a large contract for immigration-related services valued at over 100 millions dollars, which seems to include transferring federal funds to individual dioceses. Evidence is that they have been filing expenses and being reimbursed on a monthly basus. That is not “charity,” that is a contractual relationship to provide services for the federal government. There are charitable motivations behind it, and no doubt the individuals providing the services truly want to help others. But they are being paid for services, and only a minuscule fraction of their funding comes from charitable donations.
Whatever the relationship between the USCCB and the federal government has been in the past, the organization is now a major federal contractor by any reasonable standard.
So until more bishops, priests and Church employees connected to these contracts & grants are willing to openly discuss the ramifications and possible consequences of their heavy reliance on federal funding to perform essential missions of the Church, the appeals to “charity” will ring hollow. They are talking like people in denial of the basic circumstances in which they’re operating, and expecting others, especially laypeple, to tacitly go along with their delusions. I’m sorry to find that I have yet to find one bishop or priest who is being candid about this. Therefore now, I can’t fully trust what any of them say on the subject of relief for migrants and immigrants. But I will keep looking for one.
The good Archbishop, along with many other bishops, asserts that the church
does not have the authority or responsibility to determine the legal status of
migrants. But there is a profound difference between legal and illegal immigration –
and that is the crux of the problem. Many Americans support legal
immigration, not illegal immigration. Ignoring this difference is naive and irresponsible.
The church should encourage all people to obey the law.The church itself has
rules and laws – canon Law. Lawless behavior does not promote the common good which the church is always preaching.
And the Vatican itself does not permit the uncontrolled influx of migrants
into its territory.
So it’s looking like the Catholic dioceses throughout the United States have gotten themselves into a bad position by tacitly accepting responsibility for taking care of the unprecedented floods of would-be immigrants during the past 3-4 years because of the Biden administration’s lax enforcement of border security and immigration laws. Catholic Charities organizations seem to have unquestionably accepted the additional funding offered by the previous administration, as well as the administration’s approach, and now they are stuck dealing with the aftermath. They must have counted on Joe or Kamala Harris winning the election and continuing to throw more money at the various “refugee” assistance and othe4 programs.
Worst of al, the bishops seem to have fully embraced the Biden-era blurring of distinctions between “refugees” (a limited group) and the much larger group of people seeking to emigrate for economic reasons (who do not qualify as refugees). Now they are stuck trying to care for whatever percentage of the 5-million-plus people they are contractually obligated to assist. And it is Annual Appeal season. No wonder we are seeing multiple bishops coming forth with statements that are basically variations on the same set of messages. They want to keep the Biden-era levels of funding going.
I have a couple of comments.
The USCCB and individual bishops often call for immigration reform for our broken system, without saying what reform they want. Archbishop Naumann at least states what he wants – to make legal the illegals, or at a minimum to give them work permits. He proposes a fine, but they are economic immigrants and have very little money. What has been broken about our immigration system is a failure to enforce our immigration laws.
The bishop states, “It is inconceivable that our previous administration either did not know or care about the location or the circumstances of approximately 300,000 children and youth who entered the United States during the past four years.”
I find it inconceivable that the bishops did not know about the 300,000 children since it had been in the news for a long time.
Alhough it is not in this article, the bishops often say that we should welcome the stranger. We do welcome the stranger about one million times a year with legal immigrants. If the bishops do not think that this is an adequate number, they should tell us why, and what the correct number should be in their opinion.
In general the bishops try to conceal that they want legalization of illegals, by not using that language in their 2025 voting guide, but rather saying that, “We must stand with newcomers, authorized and unauthorized.”
Vatican threatens illegal immigrants who may dare enter the Vatican grounds:
“Vatican Promises Stiff Penalties for Illegal Aliens Crossing its Border”
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2025/01/16/vatican-promises-stiff-penalties-for-illegal-aliens-crossing-its-border/
I did a quick search on top salaries at Catholic Relief Services. I’m removing the names because I haven’t verified the following:
President: $596,5512
Executive VP of Strategy, Technology & Communications: $356,3882
Executive VP of Overseas Operations: $352,028
Apparently, charity pays very well, especially when using other people’s money.
The average VP salary in the US for a charity is $157,532; in California it’s 203,000. For a CEO, the average is 865,000. However, the average charity is nowhere near as large as CRS is, and one can expect above-average salary for above-average work.
Charitable officials, like government officials, may well be in it more for the spending power than for their personal salary. Motivations are typically impossible to observe, and trying tends toward rash judgement, which is why we judge by the fruits, and by adherence to other Catholic moral teachings (like contraception).
“Sadly, our population is declining in the United States because of abortion, many adults choosing not to marry, and married couples having fewer children. Our birth rate is below replacement level. Without immigrants, our population decline would be even more severe.”
When was the last time the USCCB issued a statement regarding the need for Americans to marry, refrain from contraception, and have children?
There has been success in raising birth rates when Catholic and Orthodox bishops in a few other countries have promised to be godparent to those in their diocese who request it, or for the third child of those in their diocese who request it. This is something a single bishop could have a direct impact on.
When was the last time the USCCB issued a statement regarding the need for Americans to marry, refrain from contraception, and have children?’
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Good point.
The problem is the more liberal bishops and priests are controlling the issue in the United States.