Gulf Pine Catholic - page 12

12
Gulf Pine Catholic
July 1, 2016
V
ocations
From page 1
Father Dominic attended seminary in Connecticut
and Rome and was ordained a priest for the Legionaries
of Christ on November 25, 2004, in Rome. He was
incardinated into the Diocese of Biloxi in December
2014. He has served as parochial vicar of St. Thomas
the Apostle Parish in Long Beach since January 2015.
In his capacity as vocations director, part of Father
Adam’s responsibilities will include coordinating with
seminary administrations, offering counsel to seminar-
ians, planning ordination liturgies, overseeing budget-
ary matters and interacting with groups that support the
diocese’s seminarian programs, both financially and
otherwise.
Father Dominic’s primary focus will be recruitment
of seminarians.
The Diocese of Biloxi currently has six seminari-
ans: Deacon Colten Symmes, who will be ordained a
priest next summer, Braxton Necaise, Tomasz Golab,
Dariusz “Darek” Dega, Adam Frey, and Marcin Wiktor.
Father Adam believes the greatest advantage he has
in his new role as vocations director is his rapport with
young people.
“It played a big part in my decision to become a
priest,” he said.
“I enjoyed my assignments at the cathedral and Our
Lady of the Gulf. I was blessed by my ministry to the
youth of both of those parishes. In Biloxi, we had this
wonderful youth ministry, which is connected with
several parishes -- Nativity Cathedral, Our Lady of
Fatima, St. Mary in Woolmarket, Sacred Heart in
D’Iberville, Blessed Seelos and Our Mother of Sorrows
-- wonderful people, wonderful kids. And, here at Our
Lady of the Gulf, I couldn’t have asked for anything
more and I didn’t ask for anything. That’s how the Holy
Spirit works. I was afraid of coming to Our Lady of the
Gulf, yet, God is much wiser. I had a wonderful assign-
ment there, working with the boys at St. Stanislaus and
the girls at Our Lady Academy. I think that’s the biggest
advantage I have in the vocations department.
“A big part of the job of vocations director is to
foster vocations in the diocese. Of course, neither the
bishop nor I call anybody to the priesthood. It is always
the call of the Holy Spirit and always must be the Holy
Spirit that calls you to be a priest. However, there are
people who help in this process of recognizing the call.
There are people who are helping to form your heart, to
form yourself to become a priest and a big part of that
process is the work of the vocations director. So, I
really want to focus on fostering vocations in the
Diocese of Biloxi.”
Father Dominic said his goal as a vocation director
is “to promote openness to God’s call among young
men; to help open their minds to the possibility of
embarking on a journey with the Lord, to serve Him by
serving their brothers and sisters. Another goal is to
foster a climate of support for our seminarians among
the laity of our local church.”
(Editor’s Note: Read more on vocations from Father
Adam and Father Dominic in the July 15 issue of the
Gulf Pine Catholic).
Questions on Vocations? Contact Father Adam
Urbaniak via email:
.
Contact Father Dominic Pham at
(228) 863-1610 or via email:
On display for veneration were St. John Fisher’s
ring and a piece of bone of St. Thomas More. According
to Jan Graffius, curator of Stonyhurst College in
England, which holds the relics, it came from St.
Thomas More’s skull, which was rescued by his daugh-
ter, Margaret, from a spike on London Bridge.
During a Mass that was televised nationally by the
Eternal Word Television Network
, Archbishop Lori’s
homily connected Sts. Thomas More and John Fisher to
an array of 21st century struggles, among them the
Health and Human Services contraceptive mandate that
the Little Sisters of the Poor continue to challenge in
the nation’s highest courts.
“This night we recognize gratefully the courage of
all who are resisting the mandate, especially the Little
Sisters of the Poor,” the archbishop said. “They are
vigorously defending their freedom and ours -- and
they are doing so with a beauty and a joy, borne from
the heart of the Gospel.”
Archbishop Lori, who is chairman of the Ad Hoc
Committee on Religious Liberty of the U.S. Conference
of Catholic Bishops, which sponsors the Fortnight for
Freedom, also asked for prayers for the victims of June
12 mass shooting in Orlando, Florida, and their fami-
lies.
He talked at length of the modern struggle to wor-
ship freely.
“We may think that the days of the martyrs have
ended,” Archbishop Lori said in his homily, “but as
Pope Francis points out, there are more martyrs for the
faith in our times than there were during the first centu-
ries of the church.
“We remember with reverence and love those who
died for their faith -- Jews, Catholics and Protestants
-- an ecumenism of blood, as Pope Francis says -- dur-
ing the reign of terror that was Nazism and Communism.
“This night,” he continued, “we draw close to the
martyrs of the 21st century in Iraq, Iran, Syria and parts
of Africa -- those slain for their faith -- in plain sight of
us all with no one to hold their persecutors accountable.
Refugees are streaming from the Middle East just as
Jews tried to escape from the horrors of Nazism -- only
to find that they are held suspect and they are unwant-
ed.”
While religious liberty in the U.S. might not seem in
such dire straits by comparison, vigilance is required
nonetheless.
“We would like to think,” Archbishop Lori contin-
ued, “’such things could never happen here.’ … Yet,
there are ominous signs that protections for religious
freedom have waned as bad laws, court decisions and
policies pile up and as the prevailing culture more read-
ily turns away from religious faith.
“Let us be clear that challenges to religious freedom
in our nation pale in comparison to those faced by our
brothers and sisters in many parts of the world -- yet
who is served when we fail to take seriously the new
and emerging challenges to religious freedom that are
before us?
“We may not be called upon to shed our blood,” he
continued, “but we are called upon to defend our free-
doms, not merely in the abstract, but as embedded in
matters such as immigration, marriage and the church’s
teaching on sexuality.”
Concelebrants of the Mass included Baltimore
Auxiliary Bishop Denis J. Madden, Washington
Auxiliary Bishop Martin D. Holley., and dozens of
priests from the Archdiocese of Baltimore.
Other Catholic organizations represented included
the Knights of Columbus, the Equestrian Order of the
Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem and the Order of Malta.
The second reading was given by Dr. Marie-Alberte
Boursiquot, president-elect of the Catholic Medical
Association and a basilica parishioner.
June 22 is the feast day for both Sts. John Fisher and
Thomas More.
The linking of current threats to religious freedom
with the relics of the two saints carried particular reso-
nance for one worshipper.
Jim Landers, a parishioner of St. Ignatius, Hickory,
was keenly interested in the St. Thomas More relic. He
is originally from Louisville, Kentucky, where his
great-great-grandfather, Thomas Lawson Moore, was a
U.S. senator whose lineage included Thomas More.
The spelling of the name was altered when his
ancestors came to the U.S.
“This Mass, and everything it stands for, is extreme-
ly important to me,” Landers told the
Catholic Review
,
Baltimore’s archdiocesan publication. “Beyond that,
there’s the family connection. I can’t even describe
that. It’s extremely exciting.”
His sentiments are compounded by the fact that
Landers was raised Baptist and became a Catholic after
attending Mass for years with his wife, Michelle.
McMullen is managing editor of the Catholic
Review, the news website and magazine of the
Archdiocese of Baltimore.
F
ortnight
-O
pening
-M
ass
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