Clayton Schenkelberg passed away this week. He lived in a care facility in San Diego, CA. He is survived by five of his children and more than 40 grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren. He was 103 years old – and oldest living survivor of the attack on Pearl Harbor
Born Oct. 17, 1917, in Carroll, Iowa, Schenkelberg knew hardship early on. His mother died when he was 9. The stock market crashed when he was 12, triggering the Great Depression. When he was 17, his father, a livestock salesman and grain-elevator operator, was killed in an accident. Continue reading
People are surprised to learn that the Early Rule of the friars instructed the brothers not to own pets – as well they were not to ride horses. These rules are only partly about poverty; they encouraged friars not to treat animals as objects or possessions. And, in the case of horseback riding, his rule distanced the friars from the proud world of chivalry. Later in his life when sickness compelled him to ride, Francis always preferred a donkey.
Sometimes, another just says it succinctly and to the point. Bishop Robert Barron does that so well commenting on 
Today’s 
If you have been a visitor to Rome and to the Vatican – no doubt you have been present in the Sistine Chapel. Originally known as the Cappella Magna (‘Great Chapel’), the chapel takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV, who restored it between 1473 and 1481. Since that time, the chapel has served as a place of both religious and functionary papal activity. Today, it is the site of the papal conclave, the process by which a new pope is selected. The fame of the Sistine Chapel lies mainly in the frescos that decorate the interior, most particularly the Sistine Chapel ceiling and The Last Judgment, both by Michelangelo.
It’s a late December day in Jerusalem. Jesus is walking in the Temple area, and as usual, he’s drawing a crowd during the Feast of the Dedication (better known to us as Hanukkah). The people have come with a question. Perhaps they’ve heard one of Jesus’s enigmatic parables, or witnessed one of his miracles. Or maybe they just want to trap him into saying something they consider blasphemous. Whatever the motive, they ask: “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.”
This coming Sunday is the 
After having graduated from the US Naval Academy – the first cauldron of forming leaders for the Navy and Marine Corp – and after finishing nuclear power training and submarine school, I reported as a bright shiny Ensign to my first submarine! I was ready to be a deep-diving, backing down full at crush depth, denizen of the deep – “Run Silent, Run Deep” and “Hunt for Red October” all rolled into one.
St. Francis of Assisi is the patron saint of Italy, merchants, stowaways, ecology, but most famously, of animals. If one searches the internet, you can easily find all kinds of pious, ecologically insightful, and often amazingly-modern sounding quotes from St. Francis. And they are inevitably without a citation from one of Francis’ writings or at least a later Franciscan source writing about Francis. As I noted in the beginning of this series, Francis has always been reinvented and marketed as needed. Perhaps the one book most responsible for casting Francis as the lover of animals and nature is a collection of stories – many miraculous and all very saintly – that first appeared in 1390 in Tuscany: the Fioretti (The Little Flowers). It should be noted that this is about 160 years after Francis’ death.
friarmusings 