Dear Friends,

Thank you for your prayers for these intentions.

Prayer Intentions
06/26/2012

If you have any intentions to add to this list, or if one should be removed, please email me.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently announced that almost all employers, including Catholic employers, will be forced to offer their employees' health coverage that includes sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs and contraception. Please take a moment to read a statement regarding this issue from Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien.

To learn more, visit www.usccb.org/conscience

Many of you who follow the NFL and what has been dubbed "Tebow-Mania" will find this interesting.

Rev. James Martin, S.J. shares his thoughts on Tim Tebow's faith and prayer. Click here to read his article, which appeared on the Wall Street Journal's website.

We are pleased to share these "Fast Facts" about Loyola Blakefield.

Learn more about our mission and the level of academic excellence and commitment to service that resides at Loyola. Also, discover names of notable alumni.

Click the image below to view the "Fast Facts."

On Thursday, June 2, Seniors and their mothers celebrated Mass together, as part of an annual Senior Mother/Son Mass & Luncheon.

Below are links to a little “memory” of Thursday’s Mass and the wisdom that was exchanged in the form of two audio files containing Father Joe Michini’s homily and Monica Bradley’s advice at the close of our Mass. 

Father Joe Michini's Homily 

Monica Bradley's Reflection

Below are details concerning an excellent retreat opportunity for young adults. For more information, click here: http://www.apostleshipofprayer.org/heartsonfire.html

I invite you to join me in praying the Novena of Grace.

Our former Headmaster, Rev. Francis X. Moan, S.J., has prepared wonderful and simple reflections for each day.  To join me, click on this link: http://www.mdsj.org/novena/index.html

Best Wishes as we enter into the Lenten season,

Father Pesci, S.J.

IT'S BIG NEWS!

For three decades, Boys Hope Girls Hope has quietly transformed lives and communities by breaking the cycle of poverty that traps good kids in bad situations.

This Sunday, September 26th, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition will feature Boys Hope Girls Hope on its two-hour Season Premiere.

The special two-hour Season Premiere will air on ABC beginning at 7:00 PM. That's this Sunday, September 26th.

Loyola Blakfield serves as a proud partner to Baltimore's Boys Hope Girls Hope, helping to provide a college preparatory education for the young men Boys Hope Girls Hope. Loyola has accepted and offered full tuition scholarships to five Boys Hope students, two of which were among the very first to enter the program when it began in 2002. Also, Dwayne Thomas '11, this year's recipient of the Dan McNeal Award, is a resident of the Boys Hope home just down the road from the new girls home.

This is the biggest project ever attempted by Extreme Makeover: Home Edition as they build their first "group home" for a non-profit organization. You'll love this show as they build a new girls home for Boys Hope Girls Hope Baltimore.

Conference on Ignatian Discernment
Baltimore, MD
Saturday, October 16th, 9:00AM-3:00PM  

Making good decisions effects every area of our lives, and the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius offer us a way to prayerfully ponder choices that are before us.  Ignatian discernment helps us to be attentive to God and to note the affective responses to events in our lives.  Here, in the events of the ordinary, we can discern where God is leading us. This day will include a keynote address and two workshops on discernment by Jesuit Collaborative staff.  Workshops will be offered in English and Spanish. This conference would benefit both those seeking direction in their lives and those guiding others.

Location: Mission Helpers of the Sacred Heart Center, Towson, MD
Cost: $50.00 (includes lunch)

PLEASE R.S.V.P. BY SEPTEMBER 30th!

Are iPads, Smartphones, and the Mobile Web Rewiring the Way We Think?

It took an offer to appear on a national TV show for Wade Warren to reluctantly give up what he calls his "technology" for a week.

That was the only way, his mother says, that he would ever pack his 2006 MacBook (with some recent upgrades, he'll tell you), his iPad tablet computer, and, most regretfully, his Nexus One smart phone into a cardboard box and watch them be hustled out the door of his room to a secret hiding place.

Wade, who's 14 and heading into ninth grade, survived his seven days of technological withdrawal without updating his 136 Twitter followers about "wonky math tests" and "interesting fort escapades," or posting on his photography product review blog, or texting his friends about... well, that's private. But he has returned to his screens with a vengeance, making up for lost time.

Though he's vowing that he is going to reduce his screen time, "I haven't really noticed a sharp drop in my computer usage," he concedes in a phone interview, with the faint sound of computer keys clicking as he talks. The idea behind the show, called "Nick News with Linda Ellerbee: Middle School Unplugged," was that time away from gadgets might cause young people like Wade to see the benefits of disengaging from their screens and connecting in person with friends and family.

But it seemed to have the opposite effect on Wade: "I sort of learned the magnitude of how [technology] helps me." Not carrying a phone was a factor in his getting lost on his own in downtown San Francisco, near where he lives, an experience that troubled him.

Wade is a "digital native" whose world – half in cyberspace, half on terra firma – is breeding what might be called a new species of thinkers. The early 21st century may be a watershed moment in how humans learn and communicate, a change perhaps not equaled since the invention of the printing press nearly six centuries ago.

Today's technology may be determining not just how we spend our time: It actually may be "rewiring" the way we think, how we experience the world around us.

Techno-Cassandras fret over what's happening to our attention spans, our ability to think and read deeply, to enjoy time with our own thoughts or a good book.

Is technology making us dumb and distracted or turning us into expert information finders and magnificent multitaskers? Is being connected online 24/7 good or bad? Is there even a good way to tell?

Techno-enthusiasts scoff that those concerns are nothing new: Socrates, it's pointed out, thought that writing itself would harm a person's ability to internalize learning, the printed word acting as a substitute for true understanding. Technologies such as printing, and in recent decades television and the pocket calculator, have all served time as villains only to become innocuous, commonplace parts of modern life. Why should helpful new technologies from Facebook and Twitter to iPhones and laptops be any different?

Those caught in the middle are aware that something significant is happening, but wary about whether they or others are grasping the big picture. Is technology making us dumb and distracted or turning us into expert information finders and magnificent multitaskers? Is being connected online 24/7 good or bad? Is there even a good way to tell?

"I think it's subtler than, 'Is [the Internet] making us smarter or making us stupid?' " says Nicholas Carr. "It's how it's making us smarter or how it's making us stupider that's interesting."

Mr. Carr's book, "The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains," is currently bearing the standard for the techno-worried. In it, he begins by telling of his own trouble in reading at length and thinking as deeply as he once could. After some research he concludes that too much time online is not only changing the way his brain works, but everyone else's, too. "The possibility that we're altering some basic things about the way we think without carefully weighing the consequences is troubling," he says. "However important it is to connect quickly with others and exchange messages, there is also a crucial role for solitary thought in our intellectual lives. And we seem to be rushing to dismiss the importance of solitary thought."

Mr. Carr's book, "The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains," is currently bearing the standard for the techno-worried. In it, he begins by telling of his own trouble in reading at length and thinking as deeply as he once could.

His plaintive cry: I want my old brain back.

"As we practice these very busy modes of skimming and juggling tasks, we think we're being productive and, you know, sometimes it can be quite entertaining and quite fulfilling," he says in a Monitor interview. "But what I don't think we fully realize is that we're altering in a deep way our ability to pay attention, our ability to be contemplative, to be reflective – the things that we might be losing."

Carr, a gifted writer admired for his ability to examine and explain the effects of technology on society, is hardly alone. Others, including scholars and scientists, are asking the same troubling questions, especially about the young "digital generation" whose members are growing up in their own screen-filled worlds.

"The brain of a child who is immersed in six to seven hours of digitally dominated media daily and reads only a little off-line will have differences from a child immersed only in books and who learns to attend, concentrate, and think about what he or she reads," writes Maryanne Wolf, a professor of child development who directs the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University in Medford, Mass. "The problem with much of our digital media is that they engage attention quickly and then engage again and again. Children are constantly moving to the next piece of information.... My worry is that children are becoming wonderfully engaged with the superficial levels of information but unaware of the need to probe and think for themselves."

Nora Volkow, a brain researcher and director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse, agrees: "The technology is rewiring our brains."

A two-class society may develop, with a mostly younger generation who are "the people of the screen" and a mostly older generation who are "the people of the book" – with two quite different ways of understanding the world, theorizes British neuroscientist Susan Greenfield.

"At the beginning of the 21st Century, we may be standing on the brink of a mind-makeover more cataclysmic than anything in our history," she wrote in 2006. "The science and technology that is already becoming central to our lives will soon come to transform not just the way we spend each day, but the way we think and feel."

"The brain of a child who is immersed in six to seven hours of digitally dominated media daily and reads only a little off-line will have differences from a child immersed only in books and who learns to attend, concentrate, and think about what he or she reads," writes Maryanne Wolf, a professor of child development who directs the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University in Medford, Mass.

Humor essayist Garrison Keillor recently summed up the generational difference this way. "[O]ur children are writing up a storm, often combining letters and numerals (U R 2 1derful), blogging like crazy, reading for hours off their little screens, surfing around from Henry James to Jesse James to the epistle of James to pajamas to Obama to Alabama to Alanon to non-sequiturs, sequins, penguins, penal institutions...," he mused in a New York Times essay. A young mind today won't stay focused on any one thing, "like a hummingbird in an endless meadow of flowers," he writes.

Others say they just have an innate feeling that Carr and his ilk are on to something. John Miedema, who lives in Ottawa, says that he can tell the different between reading online and in print. "The quality of the memories feels different" online, says Mr. Miedema, the author of the book "Slow Reading." "The quality of the memories is less rich than it is when I read more slowly."

His "aha" moment, Miedema says, was when he read Carr's explanation of the difference between quick skimming and scanning on the Web, which lodges in the brain's short-term memory and is quickly lost, and the long-term memories that a more thoughtful kind of slow reading provides. "I share Nicholas Carr's feeling that my brain has been rewired," he says.

Among the pet peeves of those critical of online reading are hyperlinks, those underlined words or phrases that when clicked on take the reader to another Web page. "The Web is almost built for distraction," Miedema says. "The links are designed to take you away from what you are reading." The evidence, he says, is clear. "People don't really read on the Web." They skim, he says.

Some research shows that online browsing doesn't result in learning that really sticks. "We're often not learning when we're multitasking; we're just skimming the surface," Dr. Wolf says.

Some research shows that online browsing doesn't result in learning that really sticks. "We're often not learning when we're multitasking; we're just skimming the surface," Dr. Wolf says.

Even common courtesy can be a victim of our obsession to stay online. In a widely quoted passage in Ken Auletta's book "Googled: The End of the World as We Know it," Google cofounder Larry Page is scheduled to meet with Barry Diller, a high-powered media mogul. But during their meeting, Mr. Page continues to stare into the screen of his mobile device. "[Diller] said to Larry, 'Is this boring?' 'No. I'm interested. I always do this,' Page said. 'Well, you can't do this,' Diller said. 'Choose.' 'I'll do this,' Page said matter-of-factly, not lifting his eyes from his hand-held device."

Some polls and studies seem to back up the "Internet is rewiring brains" argument. Nearly 30 percent of Americans under the age of 45 say using devices like smart phones and PCs increases their feelings of stress and makes it more difficult to concentrate, a New York Times/CBS News poll found last month.

Other polls point to the pervasive allure of being "connected" online. One found that a third of women ages 18 to 34 check their Facebook accounts as soon as they wake up in the morning, even before they visit the bathroom or brush their teeth. And while some 54 percent of teens send text messages by phone to their friends daily, just 33 percent actually talk face to face with them, a poll from the Pew Internet & American Life Project found.

Americans are living more of their lives online. A Harris Interactive poll last winter found American adults surf the Net on average 13 hours per week, not counting e-mails. The number was just seven hours per week in 2002.

And while only 23 percent of adults think they personally spend too much time on their Internet-linked gadgets, according to a Rasmussen Reports survey earlier this year, 75 percent think young children spent too much time online and playing video games.

Americans are living more of their lives online. A Harris Interactive poll last winter found American adults surf the Net on average 13 hours per week, not counting e-mails. The number was just seven hours per week in 2002.

But plenty of high-powered intellects remain skeptical that hours spent online is "rewiring our brains" or making us dumber.

"It's indisputable that the Internet has made us smarter.... The range of things you can explore in a day is just fantastic compared to 20 years ago," says David Weinberger, senior researcher at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. "There's no question that we feel the Internet has made us better researchers, better thinkers, better writers."

Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard, points out that one kind of deep thinking – scientific research – is flourishing today as the Internet allows unprecedented levels of collaboration and cooperation. "Discoveries are multiplying like fruit flies, and progress is dizzying," he wrote last month in The New York Times.

Paul Saffo, a longtime Silicon Valley technology forecaster, says the engineering students he teaches at Stanford University in California show outstanding skills in what he calls "associative memory" – how to know what to look for. "They're fast with [making] connections," he says. "Yes, they're probably less likely to read a 500-page book than their parents were. But ... I can remember when I was in college, I didn't exactly leap at the opportunity to spend a day reading a 500-page book either."

The "rewiring our brains" argument could just as easily be blamed on watching too much television, "if it's even really happening," Mr. Saffo suggests. "I've had an e-mail account since 1984. And I've got two computers running in here. But the biggest problem in my office is tripping over all the books."

What the Internet has done for him is "cut in on my time" to read books by giving him more choices and temptations, he says. "But it hasn't made me become more shallow."

Perhaps the printed book, revered by old-school scholars as the ideal vehicle for promoting deep thinking but bereft of hyperlinks and static and unchanging, is actually holding back our thinking process and intellectual endeavors, Mr. Weinberger argues.

On the Web, if a writer allows readers to comment he can't expect to command an argument without interruption. But his thinking may be stimulated by what others have to say.

Books "are not the shape of knowledge," he says. "They're a limitation on knowledge." The idea of a single author presenting her ideas "was born of the limitations of paper publishing. It's not necessarily the only way or the best way to think and to write."

Paper requires a writer to divide topics and to "close them off," Weinberger says. "All these are very unnatural things. The world does not consist of topics that begin on Page 1 and end on Page 256. The Internet has a better ability to reflect the structure of knowledge than books do."

On the Web, if a writer allows readers to comment he can't expect to command an argument without interruption. But his thinking may be stimulated by what others have to say. "It seems to me we're better off for that," Weinberger says. "It's going to be distracting, sure," he adds, but if they're saying interesting things, "that's also enriching.... Isn't that better?"

The world, as Internet visionary Ted Nelson has written, is "intertwingly," full of cross-connections among myriad topics that can't be neatly divided up. Those chains of relationships map neatly with hyperlinks and the "webby" online world. The discomfort being felt by those old enough to have known a world without the Internet may not persist, Weinberger says. "Now we have a generation coming up that hasn't lived through the transition" from a print world to an online world, he says.

No one, including Carr and Wolf, argues that people in the 21st century can or should stop using the Internet and gadgets that link to it. And no one really knows what the right amount of online activity should be or how individuals can best manage it.

"It has to begin with people questioning [the use of technology] in their own lives," offers Carr, who says he didn't intend his book to provide answers so much as to examine the problem. "We're all responsible for how we spend our time and the choices we make."

People addicted to being online are not going to stop using the Internet altogether, "anymore than a food addict is going to stop eating food," says Kimberly Young, a psychologist in Bradford, Pa., who is founder and director of The Center for Internet Addiction Recovery.

For children, getting them involved in real-world activities is a start, she says.

People addicted to being online are not going to stop using the Internet altogether, "anymore than a food addict is going to stop eating food," says Kimberly Young, a psychologist in Bradford, Pa., who is founder and director of The Center for Internet Addiction Recovery.

"If young people are engaged in band, swimming, extracurricular things where they're meeting other kids, I think they're OK," says Dr. Young, who notes that while Internet addiction has not been formally recognized as a mental problem in the United States, it is already being treated by professionals such as herself.

Wolf makes sure she stays off-line at specific times. "For a half hour before bedtime and a half hour in the morning I do nothing digital," she says.

Then there's the software solution. Freedom, a program developed by Fred Stutzman at the University of North Carolina, locks users' computers out of Internet access for up to eight hours at a time.

Even if we've lost our ability to read deeply, we can regain it. "Our brains are very adaptable and flexible," Carr adds. "If you change your habits, your brain is very happy to go along. The hard thing is to change your habits."

Meanwhile, Wade Warren's mom, Stephania Serena, is living on the front lines, trying to decide how to manage her son's immersion in the digital world he spends so much of his life in.

"I'm not the perfect role model necessarily for my kids. I work on the computer, I'm on a lot," says Ms. Serena, who is a designer and photographer. "It's crazy. I think we need to be more disciplined and it's really hard." She's been known to keep working on her iPhone while trying to fix dinner at the same time.

"I think it's hard enough for adults, but it's a million times harder for kids," she says.

She knows Wade is a child of the Internet. "One of his first sentences was 'on, off, peto.' 'On, off, computer.' He called it 'peto.' We have a little recording of it," she says.

It may come down to personal responsibility. "You have to be in charge. You can't let the computer be in charge," she allows.

Wade did some cooking with her during the week his gadgets were hidden away, and his mom noticed the new level of attention to others. "Since then we've been making ice cream," she says. "I wish he spent more time outdoors, but we're getting there."

Research by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University has consistently found that the more often kids eat dinner with their families, the less likely they are to smoke, drink or use drugs. The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University’s Family Day – A Day to Eat Dinner with Your Children^TM is a national movement that reminds parents that what your kids really want at the dinner table is YOU! Family Day’s 10^th Anniversary will be celebrated nationwide on September 27, 2010. To learn more about Family Day and to join parents all across America in taking the Family Day Pledge, log on to www.CASAFamilyDay.org.

X   X   X

To see a Video tribute for Archbisop William Donald Borders, click here:    

http://www.catholicreview.org/borders/borders-new.aspx

"Four Jesuits in history have had asteroids named after them...the two living astronomers with that distinction share their observations of life, faith, friendship, and the universe from their seats in the Vatican Observatory."
 - American Public Media

LISTEN TO RADIO BROADCAST


Rev. Coyne is director emeritus of the Vatican Observatory and president of the Vatican Observatory Foundation and Consolmagno is curator of meteorites at the Vatican Observatory. The Vatican Observatory is located in Castel Gondolfo, Italy.

To learn more about the Vatican Observatory or Rev. Coyne and Brother Consolmagno, click here.

ANNUAL  SINGLE  AGAIN  CONFERENCE  IN  COLUMBIA

  “Flourish Don’t Flounder,” a day-long conference for those who are separated, divorced, widowed or remarried will be held on Saturday, April 17, 2010 at Loyola College Graduate Center in Columbia, Md.

 Workshops covering grief recovery, annulments, relationships, remarriage, Theology of the Body and personality issues. Day concludes with Mass with Fr. Joe Breighner.

 Visit: www.conferenceincolumbia.itgo.com  , call 410-485-8313, 410-302-0754 or  email  SingleAgainCouncil@yahoo.com .

 Cost: $43 early bird by April 9, 2009; $48 at door

Please be aware of the following information received from the MD DOT:

On or about 8 p.m. Thursday night, February 4, the Maryland Department of Transportation’s State Highway Administration (SHA) will begin a long-term temporary closure of the left-turn ramp from southbound MD 139 (Charles Street) to eastbound I-695 (Baltimore Beltway Inner Loop), weather permitting. 

As of 6 a.m. Friday morning, February 5, the left-turn ramp from southbound Charles Street to eastbound I-695 will be closed to all traffic, and motorists approaching the Charles Street Interchange from Lutherville will be directed to use the official ramp detour route: north/eastbound Bellona Avenue to eastbound MD 131 (Seminary Avenue) to southbound MD 45 (York Road) to the York Road Interchange ramp to eastbound I-695. 

Also on the night of February 4, SHA and the contractor will temporarily close the ramp from eastbound I-695 (Inner Loop) to northbound Charles Street for one night, between 8 p.m. Thursday and 5 a.m. Friday to shift traffic patterns on this ramp.  Motorists will be diverted past the Charles Street Interchange to the York Road Interchange, to westbound I-695 (Outer Loop) back to the Charles Street Interchange to northbound Charles Street.

 In case of inclement weather, the traffic pattern changes and long-term ramp closure will take place on Sunday night, February 7 or the next possible weeknight.

 The long-term temporary closure of the ramp from southbound Charles Street to eastbound I-695 is necessary for Phase Two of construction work on the new Charles Street bridge over I-695; crews will shortly begin work on a retaining wall for the east side of the new bridge.  The right-turn ramp from northbound Charles Street to eastbound I-695 will remain open. 

 Temporary traffic signs will guide motorists through the official detour route in Lutherville and the ramp closure will remain in effect until early fall 2010.  The State’s contractor for the I-695/Charles Street Interchange project is the Six-M Company of Delta, Pa.  The entire Charles Street Interchange project will be complete late spring 2012, weather permitting.

 For more information about the Charles Street Interchange project, citizens may view lane closure updates, interchange diagrams, and other project information on the SHA project web page on www.roads.maryland.gov.  Citizens may also contact Mr. David Bond, Project Engineer, at SHA’s project field office in Lutherville at  410-296-9041, through the project web page, or by email at dbond@sha.state.md.us.

Dear Friends:

There are so many issues that we need to be informed about, especially in relation to our faith and Catholic private schools, that I thought you should see this piece in its entirety.

Father Pesci, S.J.

News from the Maryland Catholic Conference... 

2010 Legislative Session Begins Today - Budget, elections will impact deliberations.

Welcome to all Catholic Advocacy Network members who joined through registration drives at parsishes.

The Maryland General Assembly, our state's legislative body, begins its 2010 session today, January 13. The session runs 90 days and is scheduled to end on April 12. This year's session is expected to be impacted by two factors. First, the state is facing a projected $2 billion budget deficit for the upcoming fiscal year. Second, all 188 members of the General Assembly as well as the governor will be up for election this November.

Below is a preview of legislative issues the Maryland Catholic Conference expects to weigh in on this session. This is sampling of the issues, and is not exhaustive. The Catholic Review has a preview, and the Catholic Standard and The Dialog will later this week as well. Please bookmark and frequently check this page to stay up-to-date on important bills: www.mdcathcon.org/sessionupdate

Please also plan to join Maryland's bishops and hundreds of fellow Catholics at Lobby Night 2010 on Monday, February 15 in Annapolis. This annual advocacy event gives Catholic voters the opportunity to meet in person with elected officials and share their views on issues of concern. Lobby Night is free, but registration is required.

Education and Family Life Issues
BOAST Maryland Tax Credit: BOAST (Building Opportunities for All Students and Teachers) would help expand scholarships for Catholic school students and grants for Catholic school teachers by offering businesses a state income tax credit in exchange for their donations to scholarship programs. In light of the state's budget situation, the BOAST bill will be introduced this year without funding and will instead focus on administrative authorization.

Nonpublic Student Textbook Program: This loan program, which provides nonreligious textbooks and computer hardware and software, is the only form of state support that Maryland's Catholic and other nonpublic school students receive. The Conference will work to ensure that the program continues to receive adequate funding.

Marriage: In an election year, passage of a bill to redefine marriage to include same-sex couples is unlikely. However, the Conference will work to remind and encourage legislators of the public's overwhelming support (highlighted most recently in Maine, New York, and New Jersey) for maintaining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The Conference will oppose any efforts that seek to undermine our society's foundational relationship.

Respect for Life Issues
Support for pregnant women: Despite national trends indicating a growing majority of citizen support for pro-life causes, recent local bills in Baltimore City and Montgomery County have sought to harass and discredit the work of pregnancy resource centers, which provide emotional and material support to pregnant women in need. The Conference will share with state legislators the important service these centers provide, ask their help in efforts to ensure that no woman feels forced to have an abortion, and oppose any legislation that would harm pregnant women or the pro-life charities that assist them.

Death penalty: Last year, the General Assembly passed a law that tightened the evidence requirements necessary to prosecute capital cases. A repeal bill is unlikely to be filed because it is an election year, but the Conference will work with other death penalty repeal advocates to ensure that the gains made last year are not diluted or diminished.

Stem cell research: Maryland is one of a handful of states to fund stem cell research (SCR), both embryonic and adult. About $12 million in state tax dollars went to SCR this current fiscal year and, in light of the state's budget difficulties, a cut to this program is possible. The Conference will continue to advocate that state tax dollars be dedicated exclusively to ethical, effective adult stem cell research.

Social Concerns Issues
Poverty and budgetary issues: Even before recent budget difficulties, many of Maryland's social service programs were underfunded and understaffed. This year's budget cuts caused the elimination of the Maryland MedBank Program, which provided prescription drug assistance to needy individuals, the closure of several mental health facilities, and reductions in rates paid to community and health services providers, which can cause them to go out of business or stop accepting Medicaid patients. The Conference will work to ensure that the state budget helps vulnerable Marylanders meet their basic needs.

Source of income discrimination: Vulnerable Marylanders who receive federal housing vouchers, veteran's housing assistance, disability assistance, or child support payments are often discriminated against by landlords when they apply to rent a safe and livable apartment simply because of the assistance they receive. The Conference supports legislation that would ensure that those potential tenants are not discriminated against simply because of their lawful source of income (landlords would still be able to evaluate eligibility based on other factors like rental history).

As the 90th Annual Turkey Bowl draws near, I'd like to share with you, a letter from myself and Brother Thomas Zoppo, F.S.C., concerning respectful fan conduct.

I hope to see you at this year's game. Please be advised that tickets are now on sale at the School Store.

  X
We remember with joyful hearts
those who from the beginning
have pleased You by their lives
and now find rest in Your presence.

            The relationship we share as members of the Blakefield community expands with each passing year. In November, we recognize and reflect on the realization of our membership in the Communion of Saints. In faith, we firmly believe that “the souls of the just are in the hands of God.” Thus, it is a special privilege for all of us to pray for those who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith.

The Eucharist is a symbol and assurance of our resurrection and our future reunion with our deceased loved ones. Therefore, it is appropriate that the Jesuits at Blakefield remember in their Masses and prayers our deceased alumni, benefactors, and friends.

We invite you to share with us your prayerful remembrance by sending us the names of those loved ones who have passed away. Please email them directly to me at tpesci@loyolablakefield.org. Your responses will be placed on the altar of the Chapel of Our Lady of Montserrat during the month of November. This way the entire Loyola Community will join with you in remembering our beloved deceased.

Please do not send an offering. Allow this to be our gift to you. May God bless you always!

Sincerely yours,

Rev. Thomas A. Pesci, S.J.
President

Do you shop at Giant? If so, you can earn bonus bucks to help support Loyola. In order to participate, please register your Giant Bonus Card and select "Loyola Blakefield" as your school of choice.

Just before lunch today, I met "three peas in a pod."  More specifically, I welcomed three members of the MacDonald family who have started a business called "Three Peas in a Pod Lawn Care Service."  Their mission is to donate 50% of their earnings from summer lawn care to the Dan McNeal Scholarship Fund.  Today they made the first down payment as a result of their efforts thus far during the summer.

The corporate team consists of Andrew MacDonald '15, John MacDonald '14 and their younger but equally enthusiastic brother, Philip MacDonald.

You can take advantage of their services by contacting threepeasinapod1@verizon.net

Catholic Review Column" S.O.S. ," by Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien
 May 21, 2009

For the third time this school year we have had the frustrating and sad task of announcing that the doors of a Catholic school will not reopen next fall. St. Mary of the Assumption School in Govans is the latest such casualty and joins Catholic Community School (Federal Hill) and St. Michael School (Frostburg) in succumbing to the economic and demographic forces that threaten the livelihood of our entire Catholic educational system. The closings of these venerable Catholic educational institutions–each a stabilizing presence in its respective community–should serve as an “S.O.S.,” a wake-up call to anyone and everyone who recognizes the importance of Catholic schools–most especially our legislators and our own Catholic people. The message: Save Our Schools. 

We know from national studies that the key factors in the closings of Catholic schools are demographics and economics. We also know that to make Catholic education affordable for Catholic children, as well as for non-Catholic children of low-income families, greater government financial assistance is a must.

We are grateful to our governor, the senate president and other legislators—most especially Senator Ed DeGrange and Delegate James Proctor, who have worked to preserve the funding we do receive (especially in a lean budget year) and who have indicated their support for BOAST in particular and increased state aid to Maryland nonpublic schools. Now, it is important for us as Catholics to turn the frustration and sadness we feel every time a Catholic school is forced to close, into action. Speak with your school principal about how you can support BOAST. Contact the Maryland Catholic Conference (www.mdcathcon.org) to become active in Lobby Night, BOAST rallies, and other important lobbying activities. Spread the word about the BOAST tax credit to your business colleagues, and encourage them to join the BOAST coalition at www.boastmaryland.org. Join forces with other parishioners, pastoral councils and school boards in your area to approach your elected officials on this crucial issue and demand that they act now to move Maryland–where the foundation for Catholic education was laid some two hundred years ago with Mother Seton’s school on Paca Street in Baltimore--in line with other states in recognizing the value of Catholic schools and respecting the rights of parents to choose a nonpublic school for their children. 

With average elementary school tuition at $4,800 compared to the average per-pupil cost of $11,500 for public schools, our Catholic schools are a great value, especially given the performance of our students: Ninety-seven percent graduate from high school and 95% of graduating students attend post-secondary schools. Even still, $4,800/child (and approximately twice that for our Archdiocesan high schools) is a struggle for many of our Catholic families and a virtual impossibility for those needy students whom we educate as part of our Catholic mission.

We have already closed three schools this year and there are many others fighting to stay alive. State aid alone will not fix all of the challenges facing our schools. The blue ribbon committee that is working today on a strategic plan for Catholic schools in our Archdiocese knows this and the plan they will provide me next year will undoubtedly address many of the other factors contributing to these challenges. However, no plan for a sustained Catholic educational system stands a chance of succeeding without increasing revenue streams into these schools. This is something other states have realized and something we must help our elected officials in Maryland to realize. Let’s not wait until we lose another series of schools before we do so.

Since October 2005 hundreds of juniors from several area Catholic high schools have had the opportunity to visit St. Mary’s Seminary & University in Baltimore as part of an ongoing effort to promote priestly and religious vocations.

The Seminary cosponsors a program, titled “Take the Journey,” with the Vocation Office of the Archdiocese of Baltimore and the Serra Club. Mr. Joseph Reynolds, president of the local Serra Club, came up with the concept for the program.

Focus of the day is on the theme of “vocation,” being called by God. Each of us needs to reflect on the vocation we pursue in our life, whether as a priest or religious, married or single. “It is a great introduction to listening to the voice of God in our lives and a perfect segue preparing them for the decisions and responsibilities that juniors are about to undertake as they enter into senior year in high school,” said Father Thomas A. Pesci., S.J.

Typically, the visits include a welcome by the President-Rector of the Seminary, short presentations by Mr. Reynolds and the Vocation Office, a tour of the facility, Mass and lunch with the seminary community, and witness talks on vocations by a Jesuit, a diocesan priest, and a LaSalle Christian
Brother. A promotional video, Fishers of Men, is also used to spark discussion.

Noting the success of the program, Mr. Reynolds said, “Taking students to the seminary gives them a real experience of being in a seminary and viewing seminary life. It allows the students to see that seminarians are ordinary guys. This program was designed to help youths discern their vocations and to plant the seed of the priesthood.”

Although the initiative is still new, the Vocation Office pointed out that some 100 of the participating students expressed some interest in a priestly vocation, and of these, ten are in serious discernment. Participating schools include Cardinal Gibbons, Calvert Hall, Loyola Blakefield, Archbishop Spaulding, Archbishop Curley, and Mount St. Joseph.