LABOR DAY WEEKEND
As we gather this Labor Day Weekend our parish welcomes all those who have come here for the Republican National Convention.

Perhaps it is appropriate to quote a Republican president, Theodore Roosevelt, from a Labor Day Speech given in 1903, "Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing." Teddy lived a vigorous life of many labors for our country. Significantly, he was an early conservationist who began the national forests and greatly expanded the national parks. He knew the necessary connection of conservation and conservatism.

He was a personal friend of our first Archbishop, John Ireland, and they both shared a strong commitment to justice for those who labor. They were Republicans who upheld labor unions. As  Roosevelt stated in another speech, "It is essential that there should be organizations of labor. This is an era
of organization. Capital organizes and therefore labor must organize."

This is a good weekend to give thanks to God our Creator who is first presented in the Bible as one who creates and labors. Providentially, God did give us a commandment to take rest from our labors too. We gratefully acknowledge all those who labor, those who are retired and those who provide job
opportunities and job skills. We especially pray for those seeking employment.

And in the words of the book of Revelation, we remember those who have gone before us, "Yes, said the Spirit, let them rest from their labors, for their works accompany them."

FEAST DAY
As the Republicans conclude their party in the Twin Cities (and Bloomington!) we only have begun. Please join us for the Feast of St. Edward, our patron, next weekend. As our 40th anniversary year is concluding this is a great time to celebrate.

9/11
Former parishioner Tom Burnett, Jr. grew up in our parish, and heroically responded to the challenge of terrorism on Flight 93. We gather at 1:00 pm in the Church on Thursday, September 11, to commemorate his and so many others' powerful examples of citizenship that day seven years ago. Please join us if you can.

GIFT OF LIFE

On August 8th the Memorial Blood Bank conducted a blood drive here. We held this drive in part to commemorate the August 1st I-35 Bridge collapse of last year. The blood drive was very successful, and Ryan Cardinal from the Center sent the following results.

WHOLE BLOOD: Goal: 33
Donors Registered: 42 - FANTASTIC!
No Shows: 0 - very exceptional, thank you donors!
Cancellations: 0
Turned Away: 0
Walk In Donors: 3 - GREAT!
First Time Donors: 11 - WONDERFUL!
Deferred Donors: 7 - thanks for making the effort! You count too!
Voids/Incompletes: 1  (not a complete unit or pint collected)

TOTAL WHOLE BLOOD COLLECTED: 34 units/pints

So as you can see, overall we had a great blood drive!  Ryan commented, "...remember that we do look at the fact that we had 42 people register and attempt to give blood and that is what we count especially in the month of August!  Remember as well that 1 unit of blood can help up to 3 different people with that blood type, so that means that 34x3=102 potential people in the Minnesota community that will be able to receive blood because of all the wonderful donors at St. Edwards.  Thank you, thank you!"

The next St. Edwards Catholic Church blood drive is scheduled for: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 for the same times of 2:30pm to 6:30pm. Please save this date. In fact, you can contact Ryan (rcardinal@mbc.org) or parishioner Judy Gyurci (jgyurci@comcast.net) to already sign up to give.

HCMC (HENNEPIN COUNTY MEDICAL CENTER)

We are blest in Minnesota to have some great medical centers. The Mayo, Fairview University, and Abbott Northwestern readily come to mind. More locally we have Fairview Southdale and Methodist Hospitals. But if you talk to medical personal they often tell me that if they were to be in an accident they would want to be taken to HCMC. Indeed, each year the U.S. News and World Report cites the 100 best hospitals in the United States and HCMC if ranked at the top for critical care.

Patients come with traumatic injuries from all over the Midwest. Last week I was there visiting a parishioner and was shocked to find out that there is no longer a priest chaplain assigned there. The Chaplain's Department was told by the Archdiocese that no priest is currently available and that patient's should call their parishes to have sacramental care. Of course, many of the patients are poor and homeless and have no home parish and others are at a great distance from their parishes. The main responsibility of church leadership is to provide the celebration of the sacraments in a timely and available manner. We are failing in this responsibility. And under current policies there is no solution in sight.

We simply do not have enough priests, and especially those trained to do the very specialized hospital ministry. In recent years the Archdiocese has been forced to recruit priests from the developing world to fill in at local hospitals as a stop gap measure. Many of these priests are here as students. Often they are learning English and have no familiarity with our culture or with hospital ministry. (Indeed, one of these priests who needed to drive some distance to get between the multiple hospitals he was assigned to first needed driving lessons!)

It just happens that there are a number of priests trained to do hospital ministry but are not considered acceptable to serve by our church leadership. These are priests who have left active ministry not due to misbehavior but for making the conscientious decision to marry. One priest, an excellent chaplain, recently left after 25 years of ministry. He left in good standing. He continues to work as a chaplain but cannot be hired as a Catholic chaplain. It seems so wasteful that his talents cannot be utilized.

I talked to the director of ministry personnel for the Archdiocese about this and he said such decisions were above his pay grade. I reminded him that his Christian baptism gives him every right and indeed the responsibility to speak the truth and express his convictions.

I shared the above information with some people to get their feedback and received a response from a Catholic I know who works as an administrator in a local public hospital's Spiritual Care Office. This person's work includes a training program for those becoming chaplains. One of the recent interns is a Catholic priest who left active ministry after many years for these difficult personal reasons. He would have preferred staying in ministry and indeed is training to work as a chaplain. He also left priesthood in good standing.

The administrator simply concludes, " ... He can no longer perform any of the sacraments at a time when we need help so badly. I can not tell you how many times I have to tell a family we have no one to call - then ask if they have a priest. Many times they are from out of town, or as you stated, out of touch with the church. My own mother, who was such a devout catholic, ended up in a nursing home away from her parish and at the end of her life, had no 'priest' to call. I struggle so with a church that won't let priest's marry, woman be ordained ... Let alone just give Deacons more power instead of limiting what they can do. I'm talking to the choir, I know."

There is no shortage of ordained hospital ministers for other denominations. The other non-Catholic members of the Chaplains Department are shocked at how this essential ministry is being handled by the Catholic leadership.

A WONDERFUL WEEK

This had to be a first for a church parking lot when last Tuesday the (Minnesota) Zoomobile drove in with a wonderful menagerie of tropical animals for Vacation Bible School and in the afternoon the Memorial Bloodmobile pulled up to collect blood from many generous parishioners.

VBS had the special theme of Rainforest Adventure and it was a great week of appreciating how our faith challenges us to be good stewards of God's gift of creation. Many of us adults have not been faithful stewards but it was great to see the enthusiasm that our children had for this message. The gospel proclaims that the humble will inherit the earth. And the upcoming generations will literally inherit the earth in whatever shape we leave it, which is very humbling. We all need this lesson.

Special thanks to all the participants. The kids were great. And what a great effort by the adult and youth volunteers. This year's VBS was directed by our new Director of Children and Family Ministry, Cathy Donovan. She just joined us last month and did an excellent job. I really appreciate her team which gave so much support.

We had a secret ingredient this year. The very imaginative VBS program is used nationally and comes from the Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Company. The main writer and editor of this program is our own Director of Faith Formation, Heidi Busse. Thank you Heidi! I was amazed to see this program being used locally by many other Catholic and Protestant churches.

St. Paul tells us that all creation awaits the saving power of God and Jesus speaks of God's care for the smallest sparrow. Or in the words of Albert Einstein, "Our task must be to free ourselves...by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty."

MARRIED PRIEST COINCIDENCE

Last week in the bulletin I mentioned the Lutheran ministers who have become Roman Catholic priests, one locally and one just recently in Milwaukee. The latter receiving his "call" to move to the Milwaukee Archdiocese because his wife was transferred there for her job! As it turned out last week was also the weekend that a missionary was assigned to speak at our parish. Father Richard Paynter came from the Diocese of Kingstown on the island of St. Vincent in the Caribbean. He came to St. Ed’s with his wife! This was unknown to me. Father Paynter was an Anglican priest who entered the Roman Catholic church 8 years ago. He mentioned that there are only 12 priests in his diocese and 9 of them are not native to St. Vincent and are elderly. There is only 1 seminarian at present. One solution is to find more married clergy from other denominations and get them to defect. Then again, maybe we should just ordain our own Catholic married men and women. It seems obvious.

LAWN WORK

An older couple in our parish is looking for a young person who can help
them with mowing, raking and other lawn care. If interested, please call Fr. Mike at 952-835-7101.