Why these high school students built a chapel and Marian shrine at a local school

Bishop Oscar Cantú of San Jose, California. / Credit: Rendon Photography & Fine Art/Courtesy of Archdiocese of San Antonio

CNA Staff, Apr 11, 2024 / 14:50 pm (CNA).
Bishop Oscar Cantú of San Jose recently praised a California district attor… […]

Milwaukee, Wis., Jan 29, 2020 / 01:00 pm (CNA).- A Wisconsin Catholic women’s college has just announced plans to build housing welcoming both single mothers and retired nuns living in a residential community.

The project is a collaboration between Mount Mary University, the School Sisters of Notre Dame, who founded the college over a hundred years ago, and Milwaukee Catholic Home.

Mount Mary President Christine Pharr told CNA that the project will be a “big win-win” for students, single mothers, religious sisters, and campus life. She said the project will empower women of all ages.

Founded in 1913, Mount Mary University is a small, private Catholic college with about 1,200 undergraduates, all of whom are women, and 500 postgraduates, including both men and women.

The school will break ground on the project this summer and plans to complete the initiative by November 2021. The $45 million dollar project will consist of four buildings.

Within three of the buildings, there will be 90 apartments for sisters and other senior citizens, 24 dorm rooms for enrolled single mothers, and 52 assisted living units.

Those buildings will surround a “town center” that features a small clinic, dining services, a hair and nail salon, exercise facilities, and a chapel.

“It’ll have a beautiful two-story chapel in it, and many of the artifacts and the stained glass windows from the current convent will be brought over to this new venture to make sure that the heritage of the sisters is preserved as we go forward,” Pharr said.

One of the dorms will also offer on-site child care with space for 120 children. Pharr said about 10 percent of students at the college are single mothers.

While Pharr was vice-president of College of St Mary in Omaha, Nebraska, she witnessed the success of the college’s single mother dorm. Although she did not supervise the program, she said, she was able to become familiar with its operations and engage closely with the students.

Pharr emphasized the importance of providing mothers with the proper resources to overcome the barriers that prevent them from pursuing higher education. She pointed to statistics that show a growing trend of single mothers in higher education, but with much lower graduation rates than women without children.

“If you’re looking at data over maybe the last 15, 20 years, the number of single mothers returning to college has increased significantly nationally. About 11% of college students are single mothers in the state,” she said.

“There’s about 32,000 single mothers who are college students, and yet their graduation rates are less than half of women without children. The obstacles that they face are rather significant: affordable housing, quality childcare, transportation, [and] just plain financing that can allow them the resources to go to a university and get an education.”

Pharr said that through grant programs, the university has been able to provide academic tutoring, counseling, advising, emergency loans, and food assistance to single mothers.

“This is important because it provides a place for single mothers to get an education in a safe environment. As a small Catholic institution, we provide tremendous resources to our students,” she said.

“I think at this institution, the potential to provide an environment where these women can be successful when they might not be living out in the community commuting, trying to address all of those other issues.”

Pharr said the housing project has been in the development over the past couple years as a response to the order’s declining number of nuns and an increase in retired sisters. When the project was initially under development, she said the order was looking at opening the space to non-religious elderly people.

Pharr had the idea to include single mothers.

Many of the nuns who will live on campus now live in convents elsewhere. Since many sisters had been involved with the school, Pharr said they are excited to come back to campus. She noted the importance the nuns’ presence will have on student life, bringing a light to the mothers, students, and to the sisters themselves.

“I think having the sisters in proximity to students and children will allow them to really stay young and be excited about the kinds of things they see happening on campus. It’ll be a short walk over to seminars. They can take classes; they can participate in events on campus much easier,” Pharr said.

The campus is planning for both serendipitous and planned interactions among the students, families, and nuns, Pharr said. The sisters, besides running into students on campus more, will be able to share meals in the dining room with both students and children. She also said the clinic and day-care center will become a learning opportunity.

“We also have what we call planned interactions. So in other words, intergenerational learning opportunities. We hope that the early childhood education center [will] be a lab school, which will allow for our education majors to actually learn and participate in early childhood education.”

“In addition, we have programs in occupational therapy and nursing and social work and numerous others where we will have onsite clinical opportunities and internships so that the students can learn and be in direct connection with the sisters and the seniors.”

Pharr emphasized the value of the project – which will help mothers, campus life, and the nuns – noting that the project is deeply tied to the beliefs of the sisters.

“This is a great mission fit. The School Sisters of Notre Dame, part of their charism has always been to care for the needs of women and children. Mount Mary, in a similar manner, our vision statement says that we educate women to transform the world,” Pharr told CNA.

“To me, this is just one more way in which we can continue to empower women at all ages, whether they’re sisters, whether they’re seniors, whether they’re children or students.”

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Denver Newsroom, Sep 4, 2020 / 06:00 pm (CNA).-  

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco said Friday that the city’s current restrictions on public worship— which prohibit indoor services of any kind, as opposed to other entities such as retail which have been allowed to reopen indoor operations— show “callous unconcern” for people’s spiritual needs.

“Let alone the fact that the city is judging religious services as less important, and treating them more harshly than other activities— the city has no authority at all over the Church’s right to worship,” Archbishop Cordileone told CNA Sept. 4.

“It is not the job of the state to decide what religious services are essential or inessential: that is the Church’s job.”

The San Francisco County Department of Health is currently limiting outdoor worship services to 12 people, with indoor worship services prohibited. The archdiocese covers the city and county of San Francisco— where the cathedral is located— as well as San Mateo and Marin counties.

The state’s legitimate concern for health and safety does have some bearing on how the Church operates, he said— for example, there are good reasons why church buildings must be built with respect to code.

“But the state does not tell the Church how to arrange the liturgical space—that pertains to the internal life of the Church, over which the state has no authority. The same principle applies to worship services: the state has no right whatsoever to tell the Church it cannot worship, but it has every right and responsibility to tell the Church which practices it must observe to keep people safe during worship,” Cordileone continued.

“Those practices, though, cannot be so restrictive as to effectively ban public worship, such as only outdoors with no more than 12 people.”

Cordileone said priests at many parishes around the archdiocese, including the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption, are celebrating multiple Masses every Sunday— outside, and spaced out— in order to adapt to the restrictions.

“The Body and Blood of Christ is the source and summit of our Faith. People are hungry for the Eucharist, and many priests are responding to the call as best they can,” he said.

The City of San Francisco has been closely monitoring Catholic churches in the city and has repeatedly issued warnings to the archdiocese for apparent health order violations.

Cordileone said he himself has noted “very few” violations of the city’s health orders by parishes in the archdiocese, although the few that have occurred have garnered heavy criticism in the secular press.

Even while protesting the city’s apparent unequal application of health restrictions, the archbishop has encouraged his priests to lead their parishes in following the city’s guidelines.

“Wearing a face covering is one of the simplest and most effective things you can do.  And if that is not enough, then wear one simply for the sake of good manners,” he appealed. 

“Do not show a lack of compassion for people who are afraid of catching a disease that is quite deadly to many people with comorbidities and the elderly, which we Catholics should particularly respect and protect.”

While Cordileone said city officials have been “cordial and respectful” in their dialogue with the archdiocese, Cordileone said the city still has not responded to the archdiocese’ safety plan— outlining how churches could be safely opened for indoor services— which they submitted in May.

“Whereas retail stores sent in safety plans, had them approved by the City, and then resumed indoor retail at 50% capacity.  And yet, churches can be safer environments than stores,’ Cordileone noted.

In a letter to San Francisco’s Mayor London Breed and other city officials, Cordileone last week called on the city’s secular authorities to, “at a minimum, remove the excessive limits on outdoor public worship.”

“Particularly for us as Catholics, attending the Mass and receiving the Body and Blood of Christ in person is the source and the summit of our faith, and we have shown we can celebrate the Mass safely,” Cordileone wrote Aug. 31.

He cited a recent article on Mass attendance and COVID-19, authored Aug. 19 by doctors Thomas McGovern, Deacon Timothy Flanigan, and Paul Cieslak for Real Clear Science.

Over the last 14 weeks, the doctors said, approximately 17,000 parishes have held three or more Masses each weekend, as well as daily services, combining to equal more than 1 million public Masses celebrated across the United States since shelter-in-place orders were lifted.

By following public health guidelines, these Masses have largely avoided viral spread. The doctors said in their article that there is no evidence that church services are higher risk than similar activities when guidelines are followed, and no coronavirus outbreaks have yet been linked to the celebration of the Mass.

“Catholics have developed responsible safety protocols to conduct the Mass safely. The evidence shows these protocols are working,” Cordileone told CNA.

“San Francisco’s excessive limits on the Mass are not only a violation of Americans’ First Amendment rights, they show a kind of callous unconcern for our parishioners’ emotional and spiritual needs.”

In a July 30 memo, Cordileone exhorted his priests to be as diligent as possible in bringing the sacraments to their people, including celebrating outdoor Masses each Sunday, and providing Confession in a safe manner as often as possible.

“Please regularly remind people to follow the safety practices necessary to curb the spread of the virus. This is real, it is dangerous, and it has to be taken seriously,” he added.

“The resurgence is due in no small part to people becoming lax once the shelter-in-place rules began to be lifted. Please urge these practices upon them; absolutely do not give them the impression that the coronavirus is not a serious threat to the physical health of our community.”

The Benedict XVI Institute for Sacred Music and Divine Worship, which provides liturgical resources in the archdiocese, shared a petition Aug. 31 in support of Cordileone’s statement calling for the lifting of restrictions on the Mass. To date more than 1,400 people have signed.
 

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