Sunday, March 29, 2009

By Charles M. Bartholomew Post-Tribune correspondent

By Charles M. Bartholomew

Post-Tribune correspondent

VALPARAISO -- A former area man who helped to get the murderer of his grandmother taken off the state's death row will tell of the challenge to his faith Saturday at St. Teresa of Avila Catholic Church.

Bill Pelke, who lives in Alaska, is the president and co-founder of Journey of Hope, an organization with the mission of ending the death penalty in the United States, where surveys show a majority of people favors capital punishment.

According to the Indiana Historical Society online archives, Paula Cooper, who was 15 at the time of the murder, entered the Gary home of Ruth Pelke, 78, with three companions in May 1985, stabbed her 33 times, took her car and $10.

She pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to death in 1986 by Lake Superior Court Judge James Kimbrough, the youngest ever on death row in Indiana history.

On appeal in 1989, Indiana Supreme Court unanimously upheld the conviction, but overturned her death sentence on the grounds that it violated the "cruel and unusual punishment" clause of the Eighth Amendment, as well as the Indiana Constitution, and she was resentenced to 60 years in prison that same year.

Because of good behavior, the Indiana Department of Corrections projects her release date as March 2014.

As a member of Journey of Hope, Pelke travels all over the country telling of how they were transformed from hatred and seeking revenge to forgiveness.

Deacon Mark Plaiss, communications officer for the Diocese of Gary, said the Catholic parish at Valparaiso University responded quickly to an announcement to area churches by Rev. James Dixon of the Heartland Center in Hammond that Pelke would be making appearances in Indiana during March and was available to speak to local congregations on the topic "From Violence to Healing."

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Journey of Hope...From Violence to Healing Blog

"Led by murder victim family members speaking out... Telling their stories of love, forgiveness and understanding. Hoping for an end to the cycle of violence."

http://thejourneyofhope.blogspot.com/
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SAINT MARIA GORETTI, PRAY FOR US!

( see info about her on my other blog: http://devotionsandprayers.blogspot.com/ )

Pope Urges Pastors
to Learn and Teach Liturgy

Pope Benedict XVI is encouraging pastors to catechize parishioners about the depth of the liturgy and the meaning of the sacraments as encounters with God.
The Pope affirmed this in a meeting Feb. 26 with parish priests of the Diocese of Rome, a Lenten tradition, in which he answered their questions and concerns.
He noted, "What is really important for me is that the sacraments [...] not be something foreign along with more contemporary endeavors." He added, "It can easily happen that the sacrament remains somewhat isolated in a more pragmatic context and becomes a reality that is not altogether inserted in the totality of our being."
The Pontiff stressed the need for catechesis in the parishes. He affirmed that it is important that God "not be distant but reconcilable, concrete, that he enter our lives and really be a friend with whom we can talk and who talks with us."
He continued, "We must learn to celebrate the Eucharist, learn to know Jesus Christ, the God with a human face, up close, really enter into contact with him, learn to listen to him and to allow him to enter into us."
Sacramental communion, explained the Holy Father, is not just taking a piece of bread, but rather is opening "my heart so that the Risen One will enter the context of my being, so that he is within me and not just outside of me, and thus speaks with me and transforms my being."
"He gives me the sense of justice, the dynamism of justice, in zeal for the Gospel," noted Benedict XVI.
He affirmed, "This celebration, in which God not only comes close to us, but enters into the fabric of our existence, is essential to really be able to live with God and for God and to take the light of God to this world."
Body of Christ
The Pope stated that this understanding also "leads me to the other because the other receives the same Christ, as I do."
He continued: "Hence, if the same Christ is in him and me, we also are no longer separate individual beings. Herein lies the birth of the doctrine of the Body of Christ, because we have all been incorporated if we receive the Eucharist correctly in the same Christ.
"Hence, my neighbor is truly close: we are no longer two separate 'I's, but we are united in the same 'I' of Christ."
The Pontiff told the pastors that "Eucharistic and sacramental catechesis must really go to the depth of our existence, to be, in fact, education to open myself to the voice of God, to let myself be opened to break this original sin of egoism and to open my existence profoundly, so that I will really be just."
He noted, "We must all learn the liturgy better, not as something exotic but as the heart of our being Christian, which does not open easily to a distant man, but which is, on the other hand, precisely openness to the other, to the world."
The Holy Father emphasized: "We must all collaborate in celebrating the Eucharist ever more profoundly: not only as a rite but as an existential process that touches me profoundly, more than anything else, and changes me, transforms me and, by transforming me, sparks the transformation of the world that the Lord desires and of which He wishes to make me an instrument."

Sunday, March 29, 2009

By Charles M. Bartholomew Post-Tribune correspondent

Journey of Hope...From Violence to Healing Blog

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