By Gina Christian | OSV News

As Pope Francis seeks to include more women in key church leadership positions, a Catholic social worker has been named to a pioneering post for women in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia — and a number of women have inspired that historic journey, she told OSV News.

Archbishop Nelson J. Pérez of Philadelphia announced Dec. 1 the appointment of Heather Huot as that archdiocese’s secretary for Catholic Human Services, overseeing three agencies — Catholic Social Services, Catholic Housing and Community Services and Nutritional Development Services — that combine to form the largest faith-based human services provider in southeastern Pennsylvania.

Huot, who takes over Jan. 1, 2024 for retiring longtime secretary James Amato, is the first woman in the archdiocese’s history to hold the position. She will supervise some 1,800 staff operating a broad range of programs across a five-county area that address poverty, homelessness, hunger, family and pregnancy support, and the needs of refugees, immigrants, seniors and those with intellectual disabilities.

The CHS team represents “an incredible number of people who are every day fulfilling the Gospel and putting those works of mercy out there in real life every day,” said Huot, who has worked for the secretariat for the past 18 years, most recently as director of its Housing and Community Services division, known for its nationally acclaimed model for converting unused church buildings into affordable senior housing.

Along with her experience and education — she holds both a licensure and a master’s degree in social work — the 45-year-old Huot brings to her new role a profound faith, one that has been nurtured in particular by the women in her life, her mother foremost among them.

“My father was not Catholic when my parents were married, and it was really my mother’s commitment to her faith that got us to where we are now,” said Huot, who grew up in St. Matthew Parish in Philadelphia. “(She) was adamant that we were going to church every Sunday as a family, and my dad was part of that, whether he was Catholic or not. Every Sunday, all five of us were sitting in the front pew at the 10 am Mass.”

Her mother’s dedication proved to be transformative: Huot’s father converted to Catholicism, and in 2001 he was ordained a permanent deacon.

“As a first grader, I saw my dad get baptized and become part of the church, which was … a very amazing moment,” said Huot. “It’s really my mother’s faith that I really see as the foundation of my whole family’s trajectory in our faith lives. … I don’t think any of us would be where we are today without that at the start.”

Inspired by her oldest sister, who has intellectual disabilities, Huot completed undergraduate studies in elementary and special education as well as theology, and planned to enter the teaching profession — until a gap year spent as a Franciscan volunteer “turned my plan on its head,” she said.

Working at St. Francis Inn — a ministry in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood, which has long been plagued by addiction and homelessness — Huot experienced a profound sense of mission, one reinforced by the women who aided the Franciscan friars: “a core group of sisters” and two laywomen — one a lawyer, the other a business professional — “who had given up their whole careers to live and work at the inn,” said Huot.

“That is the year where the faith became my faith, not just the faith that was given to me by someone else,” she said. “And with that, I felt like I needed to be out there doing more with the homeless; I needed to figure out what was the next step for me.”

That step led her to becoming a case worker and later administrator at Women of Hope, an archdiocesan residence in downtown Philadelphia providing long-term housing and care for previously homeless women experiencing chronic mental illness.

“I was the only laywoman. All the rest of the staff at that time were Sisters of Mercy,” said Huot. “They were incredible women. I really feel like I learned their charism of hospitality. I learned how to really just be with and listen to people.”

Huot said she was struck by the tender, diligent ministry of the sisters, who would “plan these beautiful prayers for Christmas and Good Friday. And it was just part of our everyday work, their charism of mercy and love. I’ve tried to carry that through as I’ve progressed to other roles in social services. …They really taught me so much, both professionally and spiritually. And I really feel so indebted to them.”

Huot also was deeply impacted by a resident named Lydia, even giving her daughter that name.

“She was probably one of the most disliked residents at Women of Hope when I got there,” recalled Huot. “She was tiny; probably not more than 90 pounds. She had immigrated from northern Italy to the United States many years prior and spoke in broken English. … We don’t know exactly what had happened to her, but at some point she had a kind of mental break and ended up on the streets sleeping on people’s steps. When I arrived, she’d already been there a number of years, and she was a cranky lady.”

Despite Lydia’s roughness — “one time, she got mad at another resident and pulled the seat out from under her” — Huot said she was “able to find her softness.”

“I figured out she loved Dunkin’ Donuts, so we would go for rides and get doughnuts once a week,” said Huot. “She loved grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches, so we would go to the little cafe down the street.”

Warmed by that kindness, Lydia “would come into my office and sing and dance and laugh,” said Huot. “Once you got past that exterior, she was really quite delightful.”

When her daughter was born after Lydia’s death, Huot sought to pay tribute to her unlikely mentor in ministry.

“We were her family,” said Huot. “I feel like I’ve honored her legacy and the legacy of all the women there by naming my daughter after her.”

Asked how the elder Lydia would react to the new appointment as CHS secretary, Huot said, “I think she would have laughed. She had this way of laughing and covering her mouth and doing a little jig. And then she would have asked me for 75 cents to buy a Pepsi at the soda machine.”
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Gina Christian is a national reporter for OSV News. Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) at @GinaJesseReina.

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By OSV News

At Blessed Sacrament Parish in Tallahassee, Father Peter Zalewski is a busy and beloved pastor, tending to the activities of his church community and the local Catholic school, the largest primary school in the Pensacola-Tallahassee Diocese.

But the pastor also serves in the Air Force Chaplain Corps, and with his Dec. 14 promotion to a one-star, or brigadier, general, he now holds the highest rank in the military of any Catholic priest.

On his one day off a week, he’ll be tending to meetings at the Pentagon or elsewhere in Washington, because he now serves as the primary adviser to the chief of the National Guard Bureau on religious, ethical and morale issues.

As a general, Father Zalewski will provide guidance and programs directing National Guard chaplain personnel and supporting Army and Air Guardsmen.

The Dec. 14 promotion ceremony at the Florida National Guard Headquarters in St. Augustine was the culmination of Father Zalewski’s nearly 40-year life in the military, which began in 1984 as a cadet at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

In the early 1990s, he deployed in major military operations, including serving as an intelligence officer in Operation Desert Storm in the first Gulf War. He was following in the footsteps of his father, who served two tours in Vietnam, but he also pursued a military career with encouragement of his mother, who helped him appreciate the meaning of serving the Armed Forces.

The Florida native eventually heard the call to pursue the priesthood instead of Air Force pilot training, so in 1992 he became a seminarian for the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee. He also became an Air Force chaplain candidate.

At his promotion ceremony, Father Zalewski thanked his parishioners at Blessed Sacrament, as well as St. Dominic in Panama City, Florida, where he was previously pastor, for always supporting his dual responsibilities.

“Thank you for your support,” he said. “We have to protect those who protect us. So, thank you for allowing me to do that. That means a lot to me.”

Father Zalewski’s remarks were reported by Catholic Extension in an article on its website, www.catholicextension.org.

The priest’s connection to the Chicago-based organization is twofold. He serves on its mission committee, which helps Catholic Extension increase its impact and awareness around the country. He also has involved his parish in raising financial support for various Extension initiatives over the years.

But the priest also was a beneficiary of Extension’s funding of seminary education when he was in formation to be ordained for the Pensacola-Tallahassee Diocese.

Each year, Catholic Extension supports 400 seminarians on their path to the priesthood by providing scholarships that help struggling dioceses pay for seminarian tuition as well as room and board.

After his ordination in 1997, Father Zalewski began serving as a parish priest in his diocese and as a military reserve chaplain at bases in the Florida Panhandle. He would eventually be deployed again in 2008 as a “wing chaplain” to Al-Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates, serving military personnel supporting U.S. operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“He knows that the many sacrifices of our service members have created a toll — physical, mental and spiritual,” Catholic Extension said. “Father Zalewski recalls his visits to military bases over these past years where he would encounter young soldiers wearing prosthetics, reminding him of what they gave on the battlefield.

“More troublesome, still, are the wounds that are not visible. Father Zalewski laments that despite many efforts within the services, suicides among military personnel are not decreasing and more needs to be done to stem this tide.”

Father Zalewski said, “It’s been an honor to serve my country in the military, and an honor to serve the Catholic Church in America through Catholic Extension’s mission committee. I see that many of our service members come from rural communities — so Extension is a direct contributor to their spiritual well-being and strength.”

Roughly a quarter of all active-duty military personnel are Catholic, Extension noted, but “as a general, he will serve people regardless of their religious affiliation. … His job will be to ensure that these young, self-sacrificing men and women, who have given so much to our country, have the spiritual care they need.”

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It took place only a couple of days after I was ordained auxiliary bishop of my home archdiocese of St. Louis, back in 2001. De Smet Jesuit High School had invited me to offer the opening Mass of the school year, and I was very much looking forward to it.

Until, that is, the president of the student body rose to welcome me: “Bishop Dolan, we’re glad you’re here … even though you are a big loser!”

There were gasps! Saddened, concerned faces of the faculty and sweat from me. Then, he went on: “Yes, you are a loser. But, you’re in good company. So am I; so are all of us students here. The world thinks we’re all nerds, filled with stupid ideals about faith, morality, the church, prayer, virtue, love, and eternal life. And they can’t understand why we would follow the biggest loser of them all, Jesus, rejected and ridiculed on a cross, a big flop. It’s good to welcome another loser, Bishop Dolan. You remind us that, in reality, we are all winners, that Jesus is our victor, that the church is our first-place team.”

As is obvious, I’ve never forgotten that stunning welcome.

That comes to mind as our country has decided that our advocacy for the life of the innocent, fragile baby in the womb is a lost cause. Our exhilaration at the long-fought-for-and-awaited overturning of the calamitous Roe vs. Wade decision of January 22, 1973, has turned into depression as we watch state after state consider protection for the extremes of abortion on demand.

“You’re losers,” the well-oiled abortionists snicker, applauded by those who consider themselves “winners” — much of Hollywood, corporate millionaires, academics, the news media, and poll-reading politicians.

They have a point. It can seem pretty bleak. True, there are encouraging facts as well, like the strong preference of most Americans for limits on abortion, and support for lifegiving alternative measures such as adoption, and help for moms with a crisis pregnancy.

Still, it doesn’t look good. It actually kind of looks like Good Friday afternoon, with many passionate pro-lifers worried and frustrated, and well-intentioned allies wondering if we should give-up and just accept the reality that we’ve lost this noble cause.

It’s time for us “losers” to buck-up. In Nativity scenes all around us, we see the Holy Infant come into less than ideal circumstances and are reminded that our cause – – protection of innocent, fragile human life, the tiny infant in the womb – – remains the most pressing issue of justice and civil rights in our beloved country.

We “losers” know that abortion on demand — protected by law, for any reason or none at all — up to the actual birth of the baby, financed by our taxes (and forced upon the majority of physicians and nurses deeply opposed to it) is nothing less than a national shame and tragedy and it must be changed if civilization is to endure.

Why are we shocked when we read that the rate of suicides is so high; that high school students brag about using assault weapons on their classmates; that so many risk their health, and even their life, with illegal drugs; that aggression, weapons, slaughter, and war is commonplace, the convenient answer to any problem.

Why are we surprised? If, as Pope Francis reminds us, we can “throw away” the little baby in the sanctuary of the womb, or “hire a hitman to remove that life deemed inconvenient,” how can we shudder at the other examples — suicide, mass shootings, drugs, war, violence — of the “culture of death.”

Those who push abortion on demand are the actual losers. The baby aborted always loses; the mom — and dad — suffer a sense of loss, even when they deny or suppress it; countries lose as we enter a demographic winter; and culture is defeated as the sacredness of human life is jackbooted.

Ask no more why our society has become coarse, raw, vitriolic, violent, callous.

As Mother Teresa observed, “A nation that allows and promotes the killing of innocent pre-born babies is the poorest in the world.”

A new year is before us; in 2024 let us “losers” move from the grief of Good Friday to the resurrected Truth of Easter Sunday. Life wins. It’s time for the baby to win.
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Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan is the archbishop of New York.

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Is it legitimate to call Mary the “Mother of God”? Some Christians reject the title, saying it implies that God himself somehow has his origin in Mary. How could the Creator of all things, who depends on no one else for his existence, possibly have a “mother”?

To understand why Christians have called Our Lady by this title since ancient times, we need to take a look at the controversy that arose when prayers addressed to her in this way first became popular 16 centuries ago.

From the very beginning of the church, at the heart of the faith she has proclaimed lies the insistence that her founder, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, is both God and Man. Jesus claimed for himself the very name of God revealed to Moses, “I AM” (Jn 8:58), and he assumed divine prerogatives such as the forgiveness of sin (see Lk 5:18-26).

The apostles testified to this reality. St. Thomas, for example, having known Jesus in his humanity, affirmed his divinity as well when he said to him after his resurrection, “My Lord and my God!” (Jn 20:28).

St. John wrote in his Gospel that Jesus was “the Word” who “became flesh and made his dwelling among us,” and that this “Word was God” (Jn 1:1, 14). St. Paul taught that in Christ “dwells the whole fullness of the deity bodily” (Col 2:9).

When early Christians pondered these and other declarations of the apostolic witness, they wondered: How exactly was Christ both human and divine?

Was he, as some claimed, simply God and only appeared to be human? Was he, as others speculated, a human to whom God attached himself in a special way, dwelling inside him? Or was he, as still others imagined, a kind of hybrid, partly human and partly divine?

Ultimately, in the light of Scripture and tradition, and led by the Holy Spirit, the church concluded that none of the above answers is correct. The Council of Ephesus, an ecumenical Church council held in the year 431, resolved the issue.
That council was provoked by a controversy over one particular question: Can we legitimately call Mary “the Mother of God”?

One prominent archbishop, named Nestorius, began to preach against the use of the Marian title “Theotokos,” which literally means “God-bearer,” or “the one who bore God.” Christ was two persons, he claimed — one human, one divine — joined together. Though Mary was the bearer (or mother) of the human person in Christ, she was not the mother of the divine person (God the Son). So she could not rightly be called the “Mother of God.”

After examining this teaching, the church pronounced Nestorius mistaken. Christ was not a combination of two persons, one human and one divine. That would be close to saying that he was simply a man to whom God was joined in a uniquely intimate way — a man specially indwelled by God, like one of the Old Testament prophets.

Instead, the church declared, Christ is only one divine Person — the second person of the Trinity. This single Person took our human nature and joined it to his own divine nature, so that he possesses two natures (see Jn 1:1-3, 14).

But those natures don’t constitute two different persons. Christ is not a committee. The two natures belong to one and the same Person, the divine Son of God. And those two natures, though not to be confused, cannot be separated.

In this light, the church concluded not only that it is correct to call Mary the Mother of God, but that it is important to do so. Mary conceived and bore in her womb the one Person, Jesus Christ, who is God in the flesh. If we deny that she is the Mother of God, then we are denying that her Son, Christ, is God, come down from heaven.

For this reason, Catholics today follow the ancients in calling Mary Theotokos, “the God-bearer,” the Mother of God. The apostolic witness is clear: As St. Paul put it succinctly, “God sent his son, born of a woman” (Gal 4:4).

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Paul Thigpen, Ph.D., is an award-winning journalist and the best-selling author of sixty books and more than five hundred journal and magazine articles in more than forty religious and secular periodicals.

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By Cecilia Cicone

“The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful: History in Three Dimensions”
Joseph Pearce, Ignatius Press (2023)
300 pages, $19.95

Whether it’s the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition or Galileo, the apparent missteps of the Catholic Church within history are commonly used as arguments against her claim to be the one true path to salvation. In his latest book, Joseph Pearce sets out to work through all of church history in hopes of identifying where God was actually at work, as opposed to where human impulses and evil influences appeared as wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Each chapter of “The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful” summarizes one of the centuries making up the 2,000-year history of the church. Pearce takes a trinitarian formula, based on Jesus’ identity as “the way, the truth, and the life” and identifies where the church, in that century, had been “Good,” serving as the way of salvation; where she went “Bad,” distorting the truth of God’s love; and “the Beautiful” thing she produced as a lasting testament to God’s majesty and the wonder he is due.

“The Good” of each century of Catholic history is what the reader is most likely to expect. The saints, most especially martyrs who witnessed to the faith with their lives and their service to the poor and vulnerable, kept the church on the right path. Scholars such as Irenaeus and Thomas Aquinas revealed the divine through theological works. Widespread practice of the sacraments meant that people were continually given access to the grace they needed for salvation.

And yet, from even the first century of the church, Pearce acknowledges that there have been forces working against the Holy Spirit, seeking to confuse, divide, and even destroy the Bride of Christ, beginning with rampant heresies and persecution. From the fall of Rome to Martin Luther — continuing to the Enlightenment and then two world wars — throughout her history the church has been impacted by political and cultural events. “The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful,” demonstrates that although she is tossed and thrown at every age, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Mt 16:18).

When Joseph Pearce discusses what is beautiful about each century of church history, he looks primarily at the creation of art as a participation in the transcendental good of “beauty” without excluding secular art. What is beautiful, he says, reflects not only human culture but also brings insight into the divine as the Creator has revealed himself in that particular age. From Augustine’s “City of God” to Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” Trilogy — with many artists, writers, composers, architects, and more in between — the subsections of “The Beautiful” that close out each chapter are delightful expositions of how the popular culture of the day has continually and surprisingly fostered an encounter with God.

Pearce ends the book in the 20th century, however, without mentioning the realities that we now know and must face regarding clerical sex abuse and the cover-ups surrounding all kinds of clerical misconduct. Given the cacophony of the other evils that took place in the last century, and that fact that the abuse and misconduct issues primarily came to light in the 21st-century, this makes some sense, but at least mentioning the apparent evils being faced almost daily by the church faithful might have made the book feel a bit more current and complete.

While “The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful” may be a bit dense for the casual reader, it is a real treasure trove for the history buff or a budding Catholic apologist. Each century is covered briefly, in only a few pages, hitting the highlights of the time without getting bogged down in unnecessary details. In this book, Joseph Pearce has given the church an incredible assist in seeing Catholicism’s sometimes turbulent history within the light of God’s loving plan.

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Cecilia Cicone is an author and communicator who works in diocesan ministry in Northwest Indiana.

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