Pastor's Corner, January 25, 2015

Dear Parishioners and Friends,

This week we celebrate Catholic Schools Week. I invite all parishioners to attend the Open House of St. John Vianney Regional School – YOUR school – and as many Catholic Schools Week events as you are able.

Our parish is a major supporter and donor to the school and to the education of so many of our young parishioners. In the 2014 – 2015 school year each child receives support of approximately $1,300 for their tuition. This is how much we, as a parish, believe and support Catholic education!

On February 13, 2014 Pope Francis beautifully summarized the goal of Catholic education when he said, “Catholic educational institutions offer to all an approach to education that has as its aim the full development of the person, which responds to the right of every person to access to knowledge. However, they are also called upon to offer, with full respect for the freedom of each person and using the methods appropriate to the scholastic environment, the Christian belief, that is, to present Jesus Christ as the meaning of life, the cosmos and history.”

I am most grateful to Mrs. Robin Fredericks, the administration, faculty and staff of St. John Vianney and also to all the wonderful parents who have entrusted their children to the care, formation and education of our Catholic school.

In Christ,

Msgr. Baker

Meet the bishop

We ran into a familiar figure... Bishop Barres

On the March

The road to The Supreme Court building is long and slow but we are getting there

Can't see whole crowd

The crowd is VERY large

The crowd

On the way

We arrived in Washington. Here we are on the way to the mall

On way to March

Here are the SJV students on the way to the March for Life in Washington, DC

Pastor's Corner, January 18, 2015

Dear Parishioners and Friends,

On January 22 I will be in Washington, DC, attending the March for Life. This peaceful and prayerful protest marks the anniversary of the dreadful Supreme Court decision called Roe v. Wade which essential legalized abortion for all 9 months of pregnancy throughout the United States.

Many people do not know that Roe v. Wade was all based on a lie.

“Jane Roe” was a fictitious name for the plaintiff, Norma McCorvey. Norma never wanted an abortion – she was seeking a divorce from her husband – but young, pro-abortion, feminist attorney Sarah Weddington used McCorvey’s case as a means of attempting to overturn Texas’ law making most abortions illegal.

After Norma’s conversion to Catholicism and her public support of the pro-life movement, she said, “Back in 1973, I was a very confused twenty-one year old with one child and facing an unplanned pregnancy.” “At the time I fought to obtain a legal abortion, but truth be told, I have three daughters and never had an abortion… I was persuaded by feminist attorneys to lie; to say that I was raped, and needed an abortion. It was all a lie.”

Not only was the case based on a lie but abortion is one big, horrific lie. Pope Francis said it so well, “In the light of faith and of right reason, human life is always sacred and always ‘of quality’.”

In Christ,

Msgr. Baker

Pastor's Corner, January 11, 2015

Dear Parishioners and Friends,

This Sunday is the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. The Christmas season officially comes to an end and we begin the season of the Church called Ordinary Time.

Why was Jesus baptized? The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “Our Lord voluntarily submitted himself to the baptism of St. John, intended for sinners, in order to ‘fulfill all righteousness.’ Jesus’ gesture is a manifestation of his self-emptying” (1224).

By Our Lord’s own Passion, Death and Resurrection he opened for all of us the fountain of baptism. Some Fundamentalist Christians will criticize the Church’s practice of baptizing infants because, according to them, baptism is for adults and older children. It is to be administered only after someone has had a “born again” experience whereby one has accepted Jesus Christ as his “personal Lord and Savior.”

But this would deprive a child of a necessary means of salvation. It would deny a child the “priceless grace of becoming a child of God were they not to confer Baptism shortly after birth” (CCC, 1250) and it would deprive the Church of a particularly clear manifestation of the gratuitousness of the grace of salvation.

Today let us all give praise to God for the gift of our baptism.

In Christ,

Msgr. Baker

Pastor's Corner, January 4, 2015

Dear Parishioners and Friends,

On January 5 we celebrate the feast day of a great American saint, St. John Neumann. As Bishop of Philadelphia from 1852 to his death in 1860, the holy bishop served a territory which includes the Diocese of Allentown. Several parishes in our diocese were founded and received visits from St. John Neumann.

It is hard for us to imagine but when St. John Neumann finished his seminary studies there were “too many” priests in his native Bohemia. He wrote to the bishop of New York who decided to ordain him and send him to the growing German parishes in his territory. Eventually Fr. Neumann joined the Redemptorist order and served in many places in the northeast. When chosen bishop of Philadelphia he spent many weeks visiting parishes and establishing the first Catholic school system in the United States, increasing the number in his diocese from 2 to 100.

St. John Neumann eventually learned 6 different languages. When Irish immigration started, he learned Gaelic so well that one Irish woman remarked, “Isn't it grand that we have an Irish bishop!”

He lived poverty so strictly that once on a visit to Germany he came back to the house he was staying in soaked by rain. When his host suggested he change his shoes, the saint remarked, “The only way I could change my shoes is by putting the left one on the right foot and the right one on the left foot. This is the only pair I own.”

St. John Neumann, intercede for us!

In Christ,

Msgr. Baker