June 2019 Bulletin: A Higher Education

Lead article from the June 2019 bulletin, online now.

Andy Sipple and I just returned home from a ceremony at the STMA high school having awarded $750 scholarships to over thirty senior students. If we do nothing else as a council, this event alone is worth the current year's work. It is the single most satisfying thing that we do. Our youth are in need of all the help they can get. 

Kids today start worrying about SAT tests as early as the 9th-grade in this hyper-credentialed culture they are forced to contend with. It was not that big of a deal as recently as 1979-1981 when I attended the U of M. We surely did not spend one whole school day on one test (ridiculous nonsense). 

This was all in hopes of becoming "successful" as a student in hot pursuit of a top-rate (if not liberal progressive) education. This, of course, would lead to the landing of a great, high-paying position and rewarding career. The debt most of them will incur is a faint whisper in the far back corner of their young conscience. The debt Godzilla will surely rear its burdensome head shortly after they toss the tasseled hat in the air at the graduation ceremony. 

We need to focus our attention much more on targeted education in the form of community college, trade school, on-the-job training and such. Major public sector universities and state colleges continue to raise tuition while at the same time bellying up to the public hog-trough to feast on tax-payer cash. Some enterprising publication needs to dispatch a team of energetic young reporters to investigate all of these colleges' and universities' spending habits. I suspect some extensive waste ("just saying"). They are all in secret possession of bloated endowment funds. Most if not all of them could offer free tuition for all students for decades to come with this ever growing stash. What on earth are they planning for all of this money? Here is some information on university endowment funds for parents who struggle to find funds to help their kids: Yale-$27 billion, Texas University system-$26.5 billion, Stanford-$24.7 billion, Princeton-$23.8 billion, MIT-$14.9 billion, etc. 

Our own University of Minnesota is #24 on the list and has $4 billion in a large maroon and gold piggy bank with a gopher on it. This has never delayed their annual trip to the capitol to sing for more cold tax-payer cash from our complicit legislators. Having stated all of this, it is a wonderful thing we do as a council to help these kids in a small way to lessen the financial strain. 

It has been great serving Council 4174 KCs for the past two years as Grand Knight and the past seven years as an officer. I look forward to helping out Andy as best I can and wish him and all officers Godspeed as they take over. I know we will be in good hands.

God bless,

Gary Frandsen

Grand Knight

May 2019 Bulletin: Easter Vigil

Lead article from the May 2019 bulletin, online now.

For the first forty-nine years of my life, the Easter Vigil meant nothing to me. That all changed at the Easter Vigil 2009 when Fr. Gregory Abbott and Fr. Michael Becker led me into the water as a Catechumen as I welcomed the light of Christ. I found myself immersed in the same baptismal font that my youngest daughter Anna was baptized in five years earlier. I had literally followed all three of my girls into the faith.

The occurrence would not have taken place without them. God set me on my path in February 1986 aged twenty six years. The journey was started as a result of my signature on a document that clearly explained my commitment to raise my future children in the Catholic faith. Father Joe at St. Gerard's Catholic church would not marry us without it. After all, I was being honest when I informed him of my agnostic beliefs. We hoped to have a bunch of kids, but they did not come.

The next 14 years were filled with infertility, doctors and frustration. As a Catholic, my wife Gina prayed on it. I also offered prayers that followed within my agnostic parameters, you know, "If you are up there please present us with children" type of prayer.

Those prayers were answered in 2001- 2003 when we journeyed to the Russian Republic on four occasions and gained our daughters through adoption. We moved to Albertville between daughters and set up shop. We were reminded of our commitment to raise our daughters Catholic and began to attend Mass on Sundays. Father Siebenaler then baptized Marina in 2003 and Father Michael Becker baptized Anna in the new church in 2005.

For the next five years I attended Mass with my family on a weekly basis. I behaved myself as a non-Catholic and stayed in my seat during communion while paying close attention to that which was going on around me. I asked Gina many questions about the Mass the stand- up-sit down stand-up sit-down, the doing of the dishes and such. What I witnessed also was a lot of men bringing their families to church, and leading them to faith filled lives.

This began to chip away at my uncertain position about Christ and God. I began to watch the EWTN network and studied Pope John Paul to some extent due to his huge cultural impact in the Christian world. My wife asked me if I was stalking the Catholic church. I guess I was, and we placed both girls on the list to attend the Catholic school and continued attending Mass. One day I found my way to Father Abbott's office discussing the RCIA program. I joined and spent the next year pouring over the Catechism.

The long, 49-year, meandering path then ended in 2009 at the Easter Vigil where Fr. Abbott and Fr. Becker led me into that same baptismal font that my daughter was led into five years earlier. The congregation that night could not have made me feel more welcome. I was bathed in Christ's light for the first time in my life. Delivered there in no small part due to my three girls.

So when you are thinking about which Easter service to attend, please consider the wonderful Easter Vigil. Where else can you witness a large group of people coming into the light of Jesus and embraced by his welcoming arms?

God bless, 

Gary Frandsen

Grand Knight

April 2019 Bulletin: "Prickly Pear"

Lead article from the April 2019 bulletin, online now.

The working definition of faith has always been belief without proof. Inasmuch as the word relates to Christians. Consider the Opuntia "Prickly Pear" that not only grows, but flourishes in my back yard garden. One would seldom associate this thorny cactus with the inhospitable climate we Minnesotans tolerate. It is much more prevalent in Mexico and the southwest United States. Yet here it is. Last year it produced over 100 obnoxiously gorgeous bright yellow flowers. Each one features a blaze-orange bed deep within its depths to tantalize bees and hummingbirds into spreading its pollen which cling precariously in clumps on the ends of pale green stems. I have watched many territorial hummingbird skirmishes over these blooms. Each flower lives exactly 24 hours with 15 or so per day for a week or so. The fruit that follows is sold in the open markets of central America and Mexico. 

Charles Darwin was fascinated with these little gems and studied their peculiar tendency to setup shop in northern climates. Even before I was welcomed into the Church in 2009, the beautiful realities of nature (Gods creation) would not allow me to step out of pantheism into outright atheism. It was much easier to call myself agnostic. The Church gives none of the three a passing glance. And for good reason. All of the three fail to recognize what God intended for them to see. For a long time I wanted proof for the existence of God. I needed a miracle just for me and I felt that I deserved one. None came. I did not realize nor pay heed to the fact that these miraculous things were all around me. I simply had lost my ability to wonder. Something I possessed as a child had been vanquished as a mature adult. Beaten into submission by years of capitulation to the cynical contemporary culture we exist in. 

Luke 12:12 2-9: "Consider the lilies, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin. Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."

Proof enough if I could hear. I don't need to test God and have him preform a miracle on a stage with me alone in the audience. He has given us a bounty of evidence. Just open your eyes, the proof is everywhere. It is not without irony that I offer up the vagaries of this little plant species with its glorious flower as evidence of God. Even Charles Darwin, the man cited for a theory used to argue against God also fell under its spell. The next time you think you need some kind of supernatural proof or you travel to some far away destination to be where miracles have taken place, remember to pause for a second and realize you may need travel only as far as your back yard. God bless!

Gary Fransen

Grand Knight

Job 12 7-9: "Ask the beasts, and they will teach you; the birds of the sky they will tell you or the bushes of the earth; they will show you and the fish of the sea will teach you.  Who among all of these does not know that the hand of the lord has done this"