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DIOCESAN NEWS
11/10/06
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Angel exhibit coming to Jackson in 2007
By Fabvienen Taylor
JACKSON — Sue Anne Booth’s started her collection of angels after she received a few as gifts.

“The Annunciation” by Benedetto Gennari (1633-1715), an oil on canvas, will be in the exhibit. (Image courtesy of the Mississippi Museum of Art)

   “I decided I would like to have some more of them,” said the secretary for the diocesan Department of Evangelization and longtime member of Clinton Holy Savior Parish.
   So when the time for gifts would come around — birthday, anniversary, Christmas — Booth would request an angel. Her husband, Mike, and three children responded accordingly.
   Now she has a collection of about 25, most of them Christmas ornaments, but also statues in different art mediums — wood, ceramic, tin. Her favorite is one with moveable arms.
   Booth, like a lot of Catholics who attended Catholic schools, was introduced to angels as a child. “Growing up in Catholic school we said the prayer to the guardian angel every day,” she said.
   As she grew to adulthood, Booth’s understanding of angels grew too. “I’ve progressed from the Guardian Angel prayer that I said as a child to St. Michael the Archangel. “I believe our loving and merciful God has given us angels ‘to light, to guard, to rule and guide’ as well as ‘to defend us in battle; be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
   “Since the fallen angels were our downfall, God has sent his good angels to help lift us up,” according to Booth.
   Booth will get to see a slew of angels — in the heavenly hosts, delivering messages from God to mortals, casting down Lucifer — and in various hierarchies — cheraphim, seraphim, guardian — when Between God and Man:    Angels in Italian Art comes to the Mississippi Museum of Art (MMA) from June to December 2007
   “The art for the exhibition will cover the Medieval period all the way up to the contemporary,” said Maggie Lacey, director of marketing for the museum. “But it focuses mainly on the Renaissance.”
   Angels have a wide appeal, said Lacey, and museum officials are expecting a huge turnout of visitors, not only from Mississippi and nearby states, but from across the Southeastern United States.
   “Angels are something that individuals who may not have ever been to the museum, or been interested in art, will be interested in and get excited about,” said Lacey. “We are expecting some of the largest numbers we’ve ever had.”
   The museum is working with the National Exhibits Association in Lubbock, Texas, and Crisalide in Rome, Italy, to secure works from collections in the Vatican Museums, the Palazzo Pitti and Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence, and Museo Nazionale di Palazzo Venezi and Galleria Borghese in Rome.
   The exhibition, consisting of 200 works, will be curated by Dr. Francesco Buranelli, director general of the Vatican Museums.
   Between God and Man: Angels in Italian Art will open the museum’s newly-renovated facility and is the ninth in the Annie Laurie Swaim Hearin Memorial Exhibition Series.
   “I think it is going to be a fabulous exhibition,” said Mary Woodward, director of the Office of Evangelization.
   Woodward and Bishop Joseph Latino of the Diocese of Jackson met with museum officials four months ago to talk about planning complementary activities around the exhibit.
   Woodward and Bishop Latino will travel to Rome in December for an already-planned tour.
   While there, Woodward, a member of the museum, will lead MMA officials and supporters on a tour of St. Mary Major Basilica, one of the four major basilicas in Rome.
   MMA officials will be in Italy to preview the art for the exhibit, said Lacey. “They have appointments at the various museums where the art is being loaned from and meetings with Dr. Buranelli, who is curating the exhibit, to talk with him and see firsthand what’s coming,” she said.
   The concept of angels carries over from the Jewish tradition to the Christian tradition to Islam, said Woodward.
   “We’ve always had a concept of messengers from God in most cultures going back to the ancient Greeks and Romans and their gods,” said Woodward.
   They had Hermes, she said, a messenger from the gods to people, who was portrayed with a winged helmet and winged feet.
   “We’ve always wanted a connection with God, always tried to visually represent the connection. Wings help with that. I think the depiction of angels in pictures and in churches is our way of trying to represent a creature who connects us with God,” she said.
   Medieval times is when a hierarchy of angels became prominent, Woodward said.
   “We set up a hierarchy of angels — nine layers, set up in three separate groups, three different classes — for instance in Dante’s Inferno,” she said.
There were angels, archangels, principalities, powers, virtues, dominions, seraphim, cheraphim and so forth, Woodward said. However, the chubby cherubs taking flight around Valentine’s Day, she said, aren’t so much religious as romantic.

Sabastiano’s Canca’s “Allegory of faith” (late 17th -18th) will be featured in the Between God and Man: Angels in Italian Art exhibition in Jackson from June - December 2007. (Image courtesy of the Mississippi Museum of Art)

   One way adults can view angels is as God connecting to, speaking to them in different ways, Woodward said, of God wanting to be a part of their lives.
“And not necessarily coming down and keeping us from being hit by a bus,” she said, which is a childlike view.
   That connection could come as an awakening, Woodward said, a realization that when things are not going so well in your life, you might need to make a change.
   “Or, for example, in Scripture when the angel came to Joseph in a dream, telling him to take Mary and leave. That was God’s way of speaking to him.”
Woodward said everyone doesn’t have to believe in angels. “You don’t have to believe, but I think they are there.
   “If you want to think God communicates with us and block out winged creatures flying down, just think of it as a way of relating to a transcendent God, reaching out trying to meet us in conversation. You can think more of heaven as all around us, all encompassing, and God is reaching out to us,” Woodward said.

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DIOCESAN NEWS
11/10/06
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Boxtop$ pass through heaps of hands
By Fabvienen Taylor
    VICKSBURG — On most Sundays the collection baskets at St. Michael Parish hold the usual treasure trove offered by its members — checks, envelopes and loose money. But occasionally, something special is seen floating amidst the more mundane monies.
    They are little 3/4 inch x 1 inch red, white and yellow squares. An untrained eye might take them for trash. But upon closer examination, one notices that the little squares are actually 10 cent Boxtop$ for Education coupons — in other words, another type of treasure, only on a smaller scale.
    But unlike the regular contents of the collection baskets, these bits of cardboard, sometimes gathered in envelopes, are headed not to the church’s coffers but to St. Francis Xavier Elementary.
    Some St. Michael parishioners place the coupons in the baskets. “I have some people at my church (St. Michael) who put them in the collection basket,” said Joan Thornton, coordinator of the Boxtop$ for Education program for Vicksburg Catholic Schools (St. Francis Elementary and St. Aloysius High School).
    “Elementary students are the primary collectors,” said the St. Aloysius High School religion teacher. “But about two years ago I really put a push on it and the high school teachers and parents became more aware of it and its advantages.”
    Through Boxtop$ for Education, participating schools can redeem coupons for cash and credit for their schools. This year, 2006, is the 10th year anniversary of the Box Tops for Education program, started in California by General Mills in 1996.
    It started out with participating schools — students, parents, teachers and friends — collecting box tops coupons at 10 cents a piece from products like Cheerios, Lucky Charms and Total cereals. In two years it was a nationwide program with over 30,000 k-8 schools participating, according to the program’s website, www.boxtops4education.com .
    Through expansions over the years to include other brands like Pillsbury, Old El Paso and Green Giant, and additional ways to raise funds — shopping online with Box Tops for Education Marketplace and earning 1 percent with every charge on the Box Tops for Education Visa® card — as of 2006, the fund raising program has brought in over $175 million in donations for more than 95,000 Box Tops schools, according to the website.
    Cindee Griffith, St. Michael Parish secretary, said people also bring the coupons to the parish office. “It’s mainly people whose kids go to St. Francis, but there are some older ladies, whose kids used to go to the school, who collect them and bring them in. Father (Patrick) Curley (pastor) is fine with it. He supports the school.”
    Griffith, who has children at the school, drops the coupons off with Linda McMinn, St. Francis Xavier secretary.
    The students also collect soup labels in another program, said Thornton.
McMinn places the coupons in a bucket near her desk. “I leave the coupons in the containers they come in,” she said. “It can be an envelope or a plastic bag or they can bring them in one at a time, whatever’s convenient for them. We collect them all year. I keep them until Joan Thornton asks for them.”
    Thornton has served as coordinator for the Boxtop$ for Education program for six years. For most of her years as coordinator, before moving to St. Aloysius, she taught computer technology at St. Francis Elementary and used the funds in that area.
    “We used it for software programs, printers, inkjet cartridges,” said Thornton who has three children in school. “We use the money for things that don’t necessarily get budgeted, but the teachers need.”
Most of the time, according to Thornton, the students bring their coupons to their homeroom teachers who then give them to McLinn ,who then gives them to her. Thornton recently sent off a batch of coupons by the Oct. 31 deadline.     “We will get a check at the end of December for about $250 to $300,” she said. Another batch will be sent off in April.

Vicksburg Catholic students Grace Franco and Blake Hudson are shown turning in box tops and soup labels to Joan Thornton. Both are turned into goods and funds to be used by the school. (Photo by Chad Sonnek)

It seems, Thornton said, that everything you buy has a boxtop coupon on it.     “So, for example, if people want to buy pizza, they just go ahead and by a bunch of them with the boxtops on them. The kids are going to eat it anyway, so they just go ahead and buy them up. And that’s 10 cents for the school. It really does equate to real money.”
    Most schools in the Diocese of Jackson participate, at some level, in the boxtop fund raiser.
    In McComb, St. Alphonus Elementary School purchased books and equipment for their library last year, according to Tammy Mabile, principal.
    In Clarksdale, St. Elizabeth Elementary is expecting about $140 back before Christmas, said Elizabeth Scarbrough, a new principal.
    Greenwood St. Francis of Assisi also participates, said Sister Carol Seidl, principal. “We’ve done it since I came here six years ago,” she said, “and we will continue to do it. Every little bit helps,” she said.
    Cathy Cook, assistant superintendent of diocesan schools, said it’s a way to keep the needs of the school before the community and a way for students to be involved in fund raising without having to go out to sell things.
    “The program has no overhead costs for the schools,” she said, “they don’t have to purchase anything. Parents are already buying the products.
    “It’s just a matter of finding someone (parent, volunteer, teacher) willing to put in the time to coordinate the program at a school.”
    Thornton especially appreciates those parishioners who have no children in the schools, but who collect and donate the coupons.
    “One thing I like about it so much is how the older people at the church, who do it, who can’t necessarily afford to give us a donation,” she said.
    “And I appreciate, as well, the older people who volunteer to cut out the coupons for me, things like that,” said Thornton. “Everybody is making a donation to the school.”

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DIOCESAN NEWS
11/10/06
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Seminarians continue steps toward priesthood
By Fr. Kent Bowlds
     JACKSON – During this fall semester, three of the Diocese of Jackson’s 10 seminarians took important steps in the process of their priestly formation.
     Scott Thomas of Jackson St. Richard Parish and Grant Holzhauer of Gillet, Ark. and Starkville St. Joseph Parish are both at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans and both received the Ministry of Lector.
Lincoln Dall of Greenville Sacred Heart Parish who is at Sacred Heart School of      Theology in Hales Corners, Wis., received the Ministry of Acolyte. Lincoln is featured in a seminary podcast, which can be found at www.shst.edu/podcast.htm.
     Of course, many lay people, both children and adults, already serve in these capacities in their parishes, but when these ministries are conferred in the seminary during special ceremonial Masses, they are public recognitions of a seminarian’s progress, and allow him to serve in those ministries for Masses at the seminary.
     These steps are remnants of the former Minor Orders (porter, lector, exorcist, acolyte, and sub-deacon) which dated back to at least the third century and were changed and simplified in 1972, giving us the current practice.
     In addition to Scott, Grant, and Lincoln, we are blessed to have seminarians Bob Soukup of Brandon St. Paul, Greg Davidson of Corinth St. James the Less, Chris Buse of Saltillo St. Thomas Mission and Tupelo St. James, Rusty Vincent of Pearl St. Jude, Luke Arredondo of Vicksburg St. Michael, Patrick Jones of Meridian St. Patrick, and Charles Macko also of Pearl St. Jude.
     New posters which feature the seminarians are now being sent to all parishes and schools in the diocese.
Contact Father Kent Bowlds, vocation director, 653 Claiborne Ave., Jackson MS 29209, 601-944-9844, frkent@bellsouth.net.

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DIOCESAN NEWS
11/10/06
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Knights sell Christmas car magnets
   JACKSON — Members of Jackson Council John T. Savage 848 of the Knights of Columbus are determined to remind Christians of all faiths to keep Christ in Christmas in 2006, said Joe Blake, grand knight.
   Council members will be selling manger scene car magnets depicting the birth of Jesus with Mary and Joseph at Jackson St. Richard and St. Peter’s parishes this year.
   “Our purpose in doing this is for all Christians to place the magnet on their vehicles as a reminder of what the 25th day in December truly is,” Blake said.
Blake is inviting all Christians to join the Knights of Columbus by purchasing a vehicle magnet “to announce to the world the true meaning of Christmas, and help promote and celebrate the greatest gift of all, God’s only Son our Lord Jesus Christ, and serve as a testimony for all to witness.” Magnets are $5 each.

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DIOCESAN NEWS
11/10/06
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Mission features Fr. David Knight
    WOODVILLE/FORT ADAMS/GLOSTER — Father David Knight will lead a mission for the Catholic Community of St. Joseph Parish and its missions, St. Patrick in Fort Adams and Holy Family in Gloster, Saturday-Wednesday, Dec. 2-6.
    “Immersed in Christ,” a journey in five steps, is the theme of the mission. This is a parish-based program for the spiritual development of Catholic lay people.
    There will be Masses, potluck dinners, soup and sandwich lunches, presentations and a penance service at two of the churches.
    The mission will begin at Gloster Holy Family Mission with a potluck meal after the 4:30 p.m. Vigil Mass Saturday, Dec. 2.
In Woodville, St. Joseph parishioners will gather for a potluck meal after the 10:30 a.m. Sunday Mass.
    On Monday-Wednesday, a soup and sandwich dinner will be served at St. Joseph Parish at 5:30 p.m. followed by the mission service.
    In Gloster, the mission service will be held at 10:30 a.m. followed by a meal all three days.
    On Tuesday, Dec. 5, there will be a penance service at Holy Family and St. Joseph parishes after the mission presentations. For information call 601-888-3261.

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