The St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity Chorale, directed by David Jenkins, will sing. Michelle Plombon is organist. A reception will follow.

The event is free and open to the public. St. Mary’s Chapel is on the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity campus at the western end of Summit Avenue. For more information visit the seminary’s website or call (651) 962-5050.

Bishop Arthur Kennedy
(Photo credit: Archdiocese of Boston)

Free and open to the public, the Archbishop Ireland Memorial Library Lecture is co-sponsored by the library and the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity.

Kennedy was appointed auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Boston in 2010 and last year was named Boston’s episcopal vicar for the new evangelization.

He previously served 30 years on the St. Thomas theology faculty, was executive director of the Office of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and was rector of St. John Seminary in Boston.

For information visit the seminary’s website or call (651) 962-5050.

The festival, which began at St. Thomas in 1980, traditionally presents a broad range of artistic forms. All of this year’s events are free and open to the public and will be held on the university’s St. Paul campus. They are:

Robin Hemley

Robin Hemley will give a lecture on his book Nola: A Memoir of Faith, Art, and Madness at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 11, in the auditorium of O’Shaughnessy Educational Center.

Nola recounts the life of the author’s sister, who died at age 25 after several years of treatment for schizophrenia.

Winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Hemley has published seven books; his stories and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and many literary magazines and anthologies. He is the editor of Defunct magazine.

Quvenzhane Wallis

Beasts of the Southern Wild, nominated for four Academy Awards and winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, will be shown from 8 to 11 p.m. Tuesday, April 16, in Scooter’s, located on the first floor of Anderson Student Center.

The film, a drama with fantasy elements, is set in the Louisiana bayou and stars 6-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis. The film will be introduced by Dr. David Penchansky of the St. Thomas Theology Department. More information about the film can be found here.

St. Thomas Alumni Choir, a mixed vocal ensemble of young and old alumni, will present a concert from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Sunday, April 21, in the Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas.

The choir is directed by alumni Sean Barker, Josh Bauder and Casey Johnson.

The choir will perform sacred and secular music by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Elizabeth Alexander, Josh Bauder, Jonathan Tschiggfrie, Stephen Paulus, Felix Mendelssohn, Alice Parker, Z. Randall Stroope and Keith Hampton.

The Gabriel Kney organ.

An Organ and Choir Concert, part of a series marking the 25^th anniversary of the dedication of the university’s Gabriel Kney organ, will be held at 3 p.m. Sunday, April 28, in the Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas. Host will be Merritt Nequette, retired professor and former chair on the St. Thomas Music Department.

The program will feature the university’s Liturgical Choir and guest alumni singers directed by Aaron Brown and retired Liturgical Choir founder Robert Strusinski; Orchestra directed by Matthew George; and organists James Callahan, David Jenkins, Kevin Seal and Robert Vickery.

They will perform Noel Goemanne’s “Song of Praise” for choir and organ, which was commissioned for the Gabriel Kney organ dedication in 1987; the Franz Schubert Mass in G; the Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani by Francis Poulenc; and the new Concerto for Organ, Strings and Percussion, featuring its composer, organist and professor emeritus of music James Callahan.

Joyce Lyon

The art exhibit “Passaggio/Passage,” featuring works by Joyce Lyon, is on permanent display on the Campus Way, located on the second floor of the Anderson Student Center.

An associate professor of art at the University of Minnesota, Lyon’s works are in public and private collections nationally, including Georgetown University Law Library, the Florida Holocaust Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Walker Art Center and the Weisman Art Museum.

Her work focuses on the intersections of place and memory. “I work from observation with an acute sense of the layering of time,” she said. “In ‘Passagio/Passage,’ I consider pilgrimage as it relates to a physical and spiritual journey and as a meditation on here and there and the passages in between.”

“Passaggio/Passage” by Joyce Lyon

A schedule of this year’s Sacred Arts Festival events can be found here.

Surrounding this third largest metropolis in India were densely settled rural areas, the location of most of my field research. After some preliminary investigation, I narrowed my study to 40 villages with a population of 400 to 800, and with literacy rates varying from almost none to nearly 100 percent. My goal was to find out why the rates varied so much; in a nutshell, the answer included the economic status of the villages, agricultural productivity, their religious make-up, location and history. The nights in a sleeping bag, with sacred cows huddled comfortably in the next room, the simple food of the villagers and their warm welcome made the site visits quite an experience! A year or two later, a condensed version of my dissertation, edited by my adviser, was published in a Cornell University Press volume titled, An Exploration of India: Geographical Perspectives on Society and Culture. The research experience was more than exhilarating and the recognition of being published was quite satisfying.

To say the least, India was a long way from the Minnesota home I had known for most of my life. I grew up near the Mississippi River on a dairy farm in southeastern Minnesota with my parents, grandparents and six brothers. Parts of my German heritage were important to the future direction my life would take – being committed Catholics, being well-organized and disciplined, being active participant-observers of and commentators on all the life around us were essential elements. Though I never would have imagined it would be so huge, that background had a profound impact on my research agenda and ability in later years. After attending the College of St. Teresa in Winona, Minn., for a few years, I entered the Sisters of St. Francis in Rochester. After religious formation, I graduated from St. Teresa’s with a history major; just two years later I began graduate school at Syracuse University, earning a master’s and Ph.D. in 1973. For 11 years I taught and held administrative positions at St. Teresa’s, during which time my main research was for my courses dealing with various geographic topics. As an administrator my tasks were to develop an effective undergraduate curriculum and write grants to support some innovative ideas related to curricular changes, both of which required a unique kind of research.

At the end of those years, my community asked me to study moral theology at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Mass. One goal was to have someone in the order prepared to deal with the medical-moral questions that arose at the hospital we sponsor in Rochester, St. Mary’s, which is affiliated with the Mayo Clinic. Since I had served for nine years on the Board of Trustees of the hospital, I had a reasonably good sense of some of the major ethical questions. In a few years I earned a master’s and license in theology from Weston.

At that point my career and research agenda took a decidedly unexpected detour. Because of my dual preparation in the social sciences and theology, the officers of the Lilly Endowment Inc. asked me to consider writing about the status of Catholic seminaries. Another author had done an overview of Protestant seminaries, and there was interest in a comparable study for Catholics. From 1984 onward, the Lilly Endowment and other agencies have funded most of my research.

In the beginning my first Lilly project was focused quite specifically on graduate-level diocesan seminaries and religious order schools of theology. The field was unfamiliar to me, but the research tools I had acquired in both the social sciences and theology were immensely helpful. Site visits were indispensable, and in the three years I had to amass information and write the manuscript, I visited more than 40 seminaries. Msgr. William Baumgartner, former Rector of the St. Paul Seminary, then executive director of the NCEA Seminary Department, was of immeasurable assistance. He introduced me to the seminary world and wrote to all the rectors asking them for cooperation. Every seminary I visited welcomed me as I invaded their territory with a packed interview schedule and endless questions for administrators, faculty, staff, students and board members.

At Weston, where I then was working, the well-published older faculty helped me organize the manuscript, edit content and find a publisher. Realizing that producing a book is very much a collaborative effort, I vowed ever after I would assist faculty who were new to the publishing world in the same way I had been supported. In 1989, the Michael Glazer Press (later affiliated with the Liturgical Press) published Reason for the Hope: The Futures of Roman Catholic Theologates. While it was never on the best-seller list, it was deeply appreciated in the seminary world, especially among the schools that were part of the research. Consequently, ten years later the Liturgical Press published Seminaries, Theologates, and the Future of Church Ministry: An Analysis of Trends and Transitions, a fresh look at the seminary situation ten years later.

Through the years as my knowledge of seminary education deepened, the scope of my research gradually and naturally broadened to incorporate numerous topics related to the Catholic Church in the United States and to seminaries world-wide. In 1995 I was invited to an international gathering of seminary rectors from more than 75 countries at the University of Louvain in Belgium. I presented talks on the status of American seminaries and at the same time learned a great deal about seminaries in Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. Following that event I was asked to make presentations to several Vatican-sponsored programs in Rome for English-speaking rectors from all over the world, and to conduct conferences at many other seminaries in Rome, Ireland, England, Scotland, Canada and Belgium. U.S. seminaries continue to be frequent consumers of my research, but international, national and regional organizations, dioceses and parishes also invite me to present material I have researched and had published.

Two developments in my research agenda resulted in other books, Educating Leaders for Ministry and Priestly Ministry in Multiple Parishes, both published by the Liturgical Press in 2005 and 2006, respectively. The second book especially resulted from teaching seminarians. In the late 1990s these graduate students began to inquire more and more about priests in their dioceses who had been asked to serve more than one parish. Almost nothing was published on the topic, so during my sabbatical in 2005, I applied for and received the Henry Luce III Fellowship in Theology, which supported my research on priests serving more than one parish. The topic has grown in popularity among seminarians, many of whom have since done their own research projects on this future ministry for their final papers in the course on “Pastoral Ministry in American Culture.”

My most recent research projects are among the most absorbing, and I hope among the most beneficial for seminaries and for the Church as a whole. For the past five years I have worked with the John Jay College of Criminal Justice on studies of the causes and context of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. The extensive study, published in May 2011 by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, is an in-depth report on why and how the abuse took place. My task this year is to prepare study guides for seminaries, parishes and dioceses, with the goal of preventing such abuse in the future – a major issue of human dignity and justice. The second focus relates to my 30 years of studying Catholic theological education, mainly as provided in seminaries. My intent over the next two to three years is to produce a “retrospective and prospective view” of where these institutions have been and directions they may take in the future. Funding for the research is all but assured by a major foundation.

One of the most unexpected and intriguing dimensions of the research I have undertaken is the convergence of several diverse aspects of my background. Cultural studies done in the field in India carried over to studying the culture of Catholic seminaries by site visits to all of these institutions. My knowledge of seminaries opened up broad areas of related studies on topics so vital to the Church today – vocations, priestly life and ministry, the development of lay ministry, and most recently the effects of sexual abuse.

What motivates me to continue examining these vital subjects? Most importantly, it is my Catholic faith that both motivates and sustains me. The richness of our tradition and the ups and downs of its 2000-year history serve as founts of wisdom and of challenge. As a Franciscan, my early formation included several years studying the life of St. Francis. One particular story about his life always has touched me deeply. St. Francis was praying before an ancient crucifix in the Chapel of San Damiano when he heard a voice say, “Go, Francis, and repair my house, which as you see is falling into ruin.” Francis took the request literally at first, but eventually came to understand that it applied to the whole Church. Through the years I have translated the meaning to be “Build my Church,” a call that is the foundation of whatever ministry has been mine to do.

Sister Katarina Schuth, O.S.F., Ph.D. is Endowed Chair for the Social Scientific Study of Religion at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity.

From Exemplars, a publication of the Grants and Research Office.

America is a national Catholic weekly magazine that has been in continuous publication since 1909. It has a circulation of more than 36,000 and is distributed internationally. America can be read online here.

Dr. John Martens

Columnists for The Word examine Sunday Scripture readings throughout the liturgical year. The Word is a forum in which biblical scholars provide readers with practical, biblical interpretation.

“It is essential to have solid Catholic scriptural interpretation in print and online,” Martens said. “This is a good way to open up the Scriptures for people from all points of view. Perhaps they can relate and have an encounter with God.”

Martens is an associate professor in the Theology Department at the University of St. Thomas, as well as the director of the Masters of Arts in Theology Program at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity.

According to its mission statement, America magazine is a forum for discussion of religion, society, politics and culture from a Catholic perspective. Directed by Jesuits and lay colleagues, America is a resource for spiritual renewal and social analysis.

Martens’ weekly column for The Word can be found on the America website.

“I was at a meeting in the library when I got the tweet on my phone,” he said. “I said to the others, ‘I’ve got to go, we have a pope.’”

Christopher Gernetzke

As he made his way to the bell, located at the top of the northwest corner of the seminary’s residence hall, he inserted the earplugs and put on the gloves. “I was warned by a previous bell ringer that it’s really loud up there, and he was right. It echoes like you wouldn’t believe. And the metal wheel you turn on the side of the bell to make it ring is cold and rough, so I’m glad I had the gloves.”

Gernetzke, of Evansville, Wis., is in his fifth year at the seminary and plans to be ordained in 2015. While he has rung bells for the weddings of friends, this was the first time he rang a bell to celebrate the selection of a pope.

“It was great,” he said. “I decided to ring it for 10 minutes.”

Gernetzke had planned not to leave campus until the pope was selected and he kept his phone close at hand so he could ring the bell as soon as the white smoke appeared.  As head sexton, Gernetzke is responsible for tending and cleaning the chapel, including linens, vestments, candles and “other duties as assigned,” such as ringing the bell.

Usually the seminary bell is rung just once a year, during the Eucharistic procession from the university’s Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas to the seminary’s St. Mary’s Chapel. That happens in the fall during the Annual Borromeo Weekend, named for St. Charles Borromeo, patron saint of seminarians.

The seminary’s bell originally came from a town in New York and was made in 1927.

Gernetzke said the view is pretty good from atop the residence hall tower. “You can see downtown Minneapolis in one direction and you can see a lot of the campus in the other. When I was ringing it I looked down and saw seminarians running from the Binz Refectory to our chapel.”

Archlutist Timothy Burris.

The concert features archlutist Timothy Burris as guest artist. Burris, who holds a Ph.D. from Duke University and a soloist’s diploma from the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, taught lute for six years at the Royal Flemish Conservatory in Antwerp and now teaches in Maine at Colby College and the Portland Conservatory.  He has performed, and has been recorded, throughout Europe and the United States.

Burris will be joined by St. Thomas professors and members of the Society for the Doctrinal Affectation of Baroque Music: organist and harpsichordist David Jenkins and guitarist Christopher Kachian.

A third society member, St. Thomas art historian Michelle Nordtorp-Madson, will present two minilectures, with slides, about art from the Baroque period in Europe.

Selections for the evening include the J.S. Bach French Suite for Guitar and Lute; Vivaldi Concerto for Guitar; C.P.E. Bach Sonata for Organ; and a selection of archlute solos, from the early to middle Baroque period, by Zamboni, Galilei and Frescobaldi.

The society’s program notes explain that it “is dedicated to stylish performances of early musical artifacts with nonconventional instrumentation. The society’s artistic mission is to arouse the elevated passions of modern audiences through elegant interpretations informed by the latest in historical discovery.”

More information about the society is available at (651) 962-5858.

The free program, followed by a reception, begins at 4 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 2, in St. Mary’s Chapel at the seminary, 2260 Summit Ave.

Joining the chorale and schola that afternoon will be organist Michelle Plombon, guitarist Chris Kachian and flutist Wendy Barton-Silhavy.

The program includes carols and hymns for the season, with music by J. Michael Thompson, Andre Thomas, Alan Smith and Kevin Vogt.

For more information, call (651) 962-5050.

Information Night will be held 5:15 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 13, in the St. Christopher Room in the School of Divinity’s administration building, 2260 Summit Ave., St. Paul. The classes will begin at 6:15 p.m. in Brady Educational Center, located on St. Thomas’ south campus. Options include: “Christianity in the Middle Ages” with Dr. Steven McMichael, “Foundations of Spirituality and Prayer” with Dr. Christina Smith, and “Theology of the Church” with Dr. Massimo Faggioli.

The School of Divinity offers these graduate programs:

• Master of Arts in Theology
• Master of Arts in Religious Education
• Master of Arts in Pastoral Ministry

A special note for St. Thomas seniors: You’ll have the opportunity to learn about the John Ireland Scholarship, which provides a full scholarship for full-time graduate studies in theology.

To register for the event and for more information, contact Brandon Wanless, (651) 962-5063, or visit the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity website.

The event is open to the public and refreshments will be served.

A 1975 St. Thomas graduate and a faculty member since 1991, Joncas will no longer teach courses but instead is free to research and write, compose and lecture. He will continue to be a tenured member of the faculty, live in a university-owned home on Summit Avenue and maintain an office in Sitzmann Hall, home to the Center for Catholic Studies.

“Father Joncas is an accomplished teacher who has received the Distinguished Educator Award from our students,” said Dr. Susan Huber, executive vice president and chief academic officer. “He also is an internationally acclaimed author and composer. Being artist-in-residence frees him to more fully devote his creative talents to scholarship and music that benefit the university, community and church.”

A reception celebrating his appointment will be held from 3 to 5 p.m. Monday, Nov. 12, in the Hearth Room of the Anderson Student Center on the university’s St. Paul campus. A short program will be held at 4 p.m.; all are welcome.

“I am deeply grateful for an opportunity like this,” Joncas said of the appointment. “For an academic, this is like heaven.” He added that he has no plans to retire, saying “this is perfect.”

After graduating with a degree in English from St. Thomas and earning his master’s in liturgical studies at the University of Notre Dame, Joncas returned to Minnesota where he studied at the St. Paul Seminary and was ordained in 1980.

He was a parish priest for several years, served several more as director of education at the Newman Community at the University of Minnesota, and studied in Rome for four years where he earned graduate degrees in his academic specialty: the history and analysis of Christian worship. Woven throughout his years of serious academic study, writing and teaching was his work as a composer.

For most of his years on the St. Thomas faculty, Joncas offered to teach extra classes. He also found time to teach graduate courses and present workshops throughout the world, write four books dealing with liturgy, publish dozens of scholarly articles, and compose … and in some cases record … 25 collections of liturgical music. One of his best-known works is “On Eagles’ Wings.”

He is a regular contributor to “Pray, Tell,” a blog hosted by St. John’s Abbey and Liturgical Press in Collegeville, and recently had a volume of hymn texts accepted for publication by Oregon Catholic Press.

He is working on three books and recently has been traveling to Chicago to record 12 new works of liturgical music that he composed and arranged. He will be singing on some works in the collection, titled “God of All Beginnings.”

Joncas recently collaborated with the Gichitwaa Kateri Catholic community in Minneapolis to create a hymn honoring Kateri Tekawitha, who was canonized as a Catholic saint on Oct. 21. He also is continuing to work on two long-term composition projects: setting all of the responsorial psalms and the hymn-of-the-day texts for the three-year Sunday and Solemnity lectionary cycles of the Roman Rite Mass.

Named for St. Charles Borromeo, patron saint of seminarians, the weekend is set aside for 40 hours of worship and fellowship between the graduate-level St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity and the undergraduate St. John Vianney College Seminary. What began in 2005 as a way to increase fraternity between the seminaries has grown into a communitywide event that is open to the public.

The weekend begins with a 7 p.m. Mass Friday, Nov. 2, at the Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas, located at Cleveland and Laurel avenues on the university’s main campus. Following Mass, a candlelight procession will cross the main campus and end at St. Mary’s Chapel, located on the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity campus at Summit Avenue and Mississippi River Boulevard. Officers from the university’s Public Safety Department will stop traffic on Summit and Cretin avenues for the procession to cross from one campus to the other.

Laity cross the Summit Avenue median in a procession take took place during Borromeo weekend in November 2012. (Photo by Mike Ekern ’02)

Enrollment at both seminaries is strong this year; the seminarians come from 31 dioceses from around the country and world.

St. John Vianney, the seminary for undergraduates, was established on the St. Thomas campus in 1968 and enrolls 133 this year, or about 10 percent of all college seminarians in the United States.

The St. Paul Seminary has been preparing men for the priesthood since 1894, when railroad magnate James J. Hill and his Catholic wife Mary T. Hill donated money to build a seminary on Summit Avenue.  It became the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity through a 1987 affiliation with St. Thomas.  Today, it enrolls 104 men studying for the priesthood, the highest number since 1980. Another 74 lay people and members of religious communities are studying for their master’s degrees in theology.

Seventy men from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis are studying for the priesthood: 41 attend the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity; 25 are at St. John Vianney; three are studying in Rome; and one is serving on a pastoral assignment.

“We are growing in numbers and in men of strong character and deep faith,” said Monsignor Aloysius Callaghan, rector at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. “This is a great blessing for our seminary and for the entire Church.”

Commenting on why St. John Vianney attracts young men from throughout the country, Father Michael Becker, rector, said, “The combination of the tremendous academic, fraternal and spiritual life here is attractive to young men willing to live up to high expectations during their college years.

Dr. John Martens

News of the fragment was all rather subdued compared to the fanfare, sensationalism and television specials that often greet “new evidence” for early Christianity, usually released to the public around Easter or Christmas holidays for maximum impact. An example of such sensationalism emerged last Easter when there were reports of a discovery of an early Christian tomb in Jerusalem. (You can read my response to that announcement on my blog, Bible Junkies.)

Dr. King’s announcement (also released online – PDF), though, is quite measured in what this fragment can and cannot say about early Christianity.

Published here for the first time is a fragment of a fourth-century CE codex in Coptic containing a dialogue between Jesus and his disciples in which Jesus speaks of “my wife.” This is the only extant ancient text which explicitly portrays Jesus as referring to a wife. It does not, however, provide evidence that the historical Jesus was married, given the late date of the fragment and the probable date of original composition only in the second half of the second century.

King made one mistake, however, in her release of this fragment and that was in calling it “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife.” Why is this a mistake? It is not a Gospel, it is a fragment (of something) and we do not know where it comes from or to what larger text it belongs. Perhaps, it is a gnostic Gospel and perhaps it is not.

Here is Dr. King’s English translation from Coptic (an ancient Egyptian Christian language) of the whole text:

1 ] “not [to] me. My mother gave to me li[fe…”
2 ] The disciples said to Jesus, “.[
3 ] deny. Mary is worthy of it35
4 ]……” Jesus said to them, “My wife . .[ [
5 ]… she will be able to be my disciple . . [
6 ] Let wicked people swell up … [
7] As for me, I dwell with her in order to . [
8] an image [

1 ] my moth[er
2 ] three [
3 ] … [
4 ] forth which … [
5 ] (illegible ink traces)
6 ] (illegible ink traces)

Finding fragments of ancient texts is not strange – think, for instance, of the Dead Sea Scrolls, many of which were in hundreds of pieces – but a fragment does not give one the whole story either. There is only a little bit of text from which to construct the whole of the argument. Is Jesus really speaking of a wife (physically) or is he speaking of a wife (spiritually), such as the Church? Only a more complete context can certify this for us.

Where was it found?
Certifying this fragment in general, however, is a big issue, and there is an even more profound issue: Many scholars now argue that this text is actually a modern forgery, taking Coptic words from the ancient Gospel of Thomas (from logia 29, 30, 101 and 114) and rearranging them on this fragment.

The scholars Francis Watson (Durham University) and Mark Goodacre (Duke University) both argue that this text borrows every word from the Gospel of Thomas. According to another New Testament scholar, Craig A. Evans, Harvard University will no longer publish King’s paper.

Dr. King knew that forgery was a possibility in her own paper, but the testing of the papyrus showed that it was ancient. Unfortunately, modern forgers can buy ancient papyrus and write on it. What makes this situation even more difficult is that King notes that the fragment belongs to a private collector who wishes to remain anonymous.

Does it say something new?
The evidence, therefore, points to a modern forgery, but this is not certain either. Let’s say it was real. Does the text tell us anything new or different from what we know about early Christianity? I suppose that the two words “my wife” from the mouth of Jesus would be new if we were certain that it referred to an actual woman who was his wife, but we are not certain that is the case.

Keep in mind, too, that even if it did say these words, the text is thought to emerge (if genuine) from a second century context. It would not be proof that Jesus was married. It would be proof that some later Christian group – gnostics or others – thought he was or wished he was married for theological reasons which are not clear to us.

Does the fragment challenge our understanding of Jesus?
If this fragment represented the belief that Jesus was married it would not truly challenge our understanding of Jesus for a simple reason: None of the earliest and best historical documents of Christianity portray Jesus as married. These documents are all in the New Testament, with the exception of the Gospel of Thomas, which also contains some early traditions of Jesus. But none of the canonical Gospels, or the Gospel of Thomas, present Jesus as married.

This fragment, even if authentic, does not provide such an early tradition. Some people say that all men in ancient Judaism had to be married, but this is not true. Apart from early Christians, we know of Jews, such as Essenes, Therapeutae and even rabbis, who remained celibate to devote themselves to God and study.

The textual experts seem to be suggesting – quite strongly – that this fragment of a (possible) Gospel is not genuine, but a modern forgery. Yet, even if it was genuine it does not give us early enough data to challenge the traditions concerning Jesus in the canonical Gospels and maintained by the Church.

The most it would tell us is that some unknown Christian group thought or wished that Jesus was married, but the best evidence is evidence we have known for centuries: According to the New Testament, no wife of Jesus is mentioned; however, he did have a lot of female disciples and was pretty close to his mother, too.

John Martens is an associate professor in the Theology Department, and is director of Master of Arts in Theology program at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity.

Born in Casella D’Asola, Italy, outside of Venice, Bernardi studied in a seminary in the 1930s, and served as an officer in the Italian Army during World War II and served in North Africa. While stationed in the Tuscan village of Volterra, he met Cecilia, who would become his wife.

He completed an engineering degree and worked for AGIP, an Italian oil company, overseeing its drilling operations in Iran. He became the Italian Consul to Iran and eventually immigrated to Minnesota in 1962.

Bernardi purchased 300 acres of land northwest of what now is Interstate 494 and Highway 100 and helped to develop Edina’s industrial park. A business partnership with Curtis Carlson of Carlson Companies led to the construction of the Radisson South hotel, now the DoubleTree by Hilton.

He eventually established Aurora Investments, a development company, and Sentinel Management Co., a residential property management business. His companies developed industrial, residential, retail and medical buildings throughout the Twin Cities area.

“Tony was a natural developer,” said William Reiling, a St. Thomas alumnus and Board of Trustees member who knew Bernardi for 40 years. “It was in his DNA. He knew how to make a deal, how to negotiate. He had good instincts and judgment.”

Reiling said Bernardi also came to love and appreciate St. John Vianney Seminary, on the St. Thomas campus. He served on the seminary’s board and made gifts there and to the Center for Catholic Studies, the Opus College of Business and the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity.

“He saw St. Thomas as a good institution that helped his son and grandchildren,” Reiling said, “and then we had the Italian connection. He would say, ‘I am a man without a country! I go to Italy and they look at me as an American, and in America they look at me as an Italian.’ It was true! He was in between.”

“Interestingly, he fell in love with this country,” Father Kevin McDonough, another St. Thomas trustee, said in his homily at Bernardi’s funeral on Oct. 9. “He told me that, when he first came to the U.S.A., he thought the people here to be naïve: ‘They did not just pay their taxes, but were proud to do so.’ But he came to see this as a place where a person would be rewarded for honest work and effort. He never stopped loving Italy, but he was proud to live in America and, yes, to be an American.”

Bernardi’s love for his native country and his fondness for St. Thomas coalesced in the late 1990s, when the university had the opportunity to buy a 20,000-square-foot residential estate on the banks of the Tiber River in Rome. A gift from Bernardi allowed St. Thomas to move ahead with the purchase and convert the estate into the Bernardi Campus, which opened in 2000.

(Reiling also became a benefactor of the Bernardi Campus, paying for renovations of a chapel that was named for Dante and Louise Seghieri, the parents of Reiling’s wife, Joan.)

One of Bernardi’s long-held convictions, McDonough said in his homily, was “Sono stato fortunato,” because he knew he was lucky to have been born into the right family, married to the right woman and living in the right place.

“He recognized that his success was not just the result of his own genius or hard work – although it was certainly that – but also the result of things well beyond his control,” McDonough said. “Fortunato also meant, ‘I have been blessed.’ He believed he had been given success for a purpose well beyond himself: for the sake of his grandchildren and extended family, for the good of prisoners, for the support of young men who, as he had done, were considering a life of service as priests.”

The Minnesota Real Estate Hall of Fame, established two years ago by the Shenehon Center for Real Estate in the Opus College of Business, inducted Bernardi as an initial member (as well as Reiling and Gerald Rauenhorst, a former St. Thomas trustee).

Survivors include two sons, Luigi (a 1985 St. Thomas alumnus) and Sandro; a daughter, Paola; 10 grandchildren, including Francesca, a St. Thomas student; and five great-grandchildren. His wife died last year.

The “diritta via” has been opened for him,” McDonough concluded in his homily. “May he know peace and rest, a happy reunion with his parents and friends and especially with Cecilia, and the reward of a life of generosity and intelligence and faith.”

Father James Burns
(Photo courtesy of Boston College)

Free and open to the public, the lecture is sponsored by several St. Thomas departments and centers: Center for Catholic Studies, John A. Ryan Institute for Catholic Social Thought, Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law, and Public Policy, School of Law, Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions, Koch Chair in Business Ethics, Center for Ethical Business Cultures, and Veritas.

Prior to joining Boston College in 2010, Burns served as co-chair and associate professor of St. Thomas’ Graduate School of Professional Psychology. He earlier had taught counseling psychology and religion at Boston University, and psychology at Harvard Medical School.

Burns has worked with Boston College’s faculty to incorporate the school’s Jesuit, Catholic mission and identity into coursework and research.

His lecture is one in a series on Catholic mission and identity that are being held at St. Thomas as it conducts a search for its next president. Father Dennis Dease is retiring next June after leading St. Thomas for 22 years.

Burns believes that formation of character is an essential task of the Catholic university, not to be pushed aside for, or replaced by, academic instruction.

He said that in studies on the perceived value of higher education, “a critical and common finding is that recent graduates lack a certain dimension of personal character, especially qualities that allow people to work well with others and contribute to the good on multiple levels.

“Interestingly, Catholic colleges and universities stand in a unique place to address this concern. Through their religious heritage and spiritual traditions, these institutions are called to cultivate such important qualities through a focus on character development in their students.”

Father Andrew Cozzens

This talk is part of the Archbishop Ireland Memorial Lecture Series. Free and open to the public, the event will be held at 7:30 p.m. in 3M Auditorium, Owens Science Hall.

Cozzens notes that the ministerial priesthood was radically challenged by Vatican II. The post-conciliar period marked a moment of crisis in the priesthood with changing roles and rampant departures from ministry. Out of this seeming chaos, Pope John Paul II invited Catholics to consider a renewed and deeper identity of the ministerial priesthood, one rooted in the council’s vision of priestly holiness expressed through pastoral charity.

This dramatic story of the reform and renewal will demonstrate how the priest must live his identity today in order to serve the New Evangelization.

“Please storm the heavens with your prayers and cheer your fellow seminarians onward to victory for the greater glory of God!” encourages Michael Daly of the St. Paul Seminary.

The Sunday afternoon recitals, free and open to the public, are co-sponsored by St. Thomas’ Music Department and Campus Ministry.

The first recital will feature David Jenkins at 3 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 16.  He will perform works of Nord Johnson, Rachel Laurin, Richard Voorhaar and the complete sixth organ symphony of Widor.

David Jenkins.

An organ instructor at St. Thomas, Jenkins earned the D.M.A. in organ performance and the Performer’s Certificate from the Eastman School of Music, where he studied organ with Russell Saunders and harpsichord with Arthur Haas. He also holds degrees from the University of Iowa and Oberlin Conservatory.

The organ was installed in 1987 thanks to a donation from St. Thomas alumnus Robert Asmuth. Built by Gabriel Kney of London, Ontario, the organ is a three-manual instrument with 41 stops of 56 ranks, with a total of 2,787 pipes. It is used for worship, teaching and concerts. Its dedicatory recital was played by Swedish organist Hans Fagius on Sept. 20, 1987.

Since then, the university’s Organ Artist Recital Series has become one of the premier pipe-organ concert series in the Twin Cities.

The list of recitalists includes international artists Ulrich Böhme, Marie-Bernadette Dufourcet, László Fassang, Jean Gillou, Martin Haselböck, Nicholas Kynaston, Olivier Latry, Peter Planyovsky and Dong-il Shin. American artists in the series have included Diane Bish, James David Christie, Robert Glasgow, Gerre Hancock, David Hurd and Joan Lippincott. These concert performances have been featured many times on the “Pipedreams” radio program from American Public Media, and the instrument has been showcased at regional and national conventions of the American Guild of Organists.

The remaining four programs in the 25^th anniversary series are:

• 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 14, German artist Almut Roessler of Düsseldorf will perform a solo recital.
• 3 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 9, organist Kraig Windschitl and the St. Thomas Schola Cantorum, directed by Aaron Brown, will perform organ music of J.S. Bach with Gregorian chant.
• 3 p.m. Sunday, March 17, 2013, French organist Michel Bouvard, professor of organ at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Music in Paris, will perform a solo recital.
• 3 p.m. Sunday April 28, 2013, St. Thomas organists will present a concert with the university’s Liturgical Choir, directed by Aaron Brown.

The Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas is located on the eastern side of the university’s campus, near the intersection of Cleveland and Laurel avenues.

For more information about the Gabriel Kney instrument, visit this website. For more information about the series, call (651) 962-5050.

The performance will feature the combined choirs of the University of St. Thomas Schola Cantorum and the seminary’s Chorale, directed by Aaron Brown. He is director of liturgy and music for Campus Ministry at St. Thomas.

Organist will be David Jenkins. He is the liturgical music director at the seminary and teaches organ for the university’s Music Department.

The 90-minute performance is free and open to the public.

Information Night will be held at 5:15 p.m. Tuesday, March 6, in the school’s administration building, 2260 Summit Ave., St. Paul. The class, “Deuterocanonical Writings,” with Father Juan Miguel Betancourt, will begin at 6:15 p.m. in Brady Education Center.

The School of Divinity offers these graduate programs:

• Master of Arts in Theology
• Master of Arts in Religious Education
• Master of Arts in Pastoral Ministry

And a special note for UST seniors: You’ll have the opportunity to learn about the John Ireland Scholarship, which provides a full scholarship for full-time graduate studies in theology.

To register for the event and for more information, contact Brandon Wanless, (651) 962-5063, or visit the seminary’s website.