Articles by Patricia Coll Freeman

Filmmaker looks ‘Outside da Box’ to inspire teens’ faith

Groth said that a big part of the problem is that “we under-challenge our young people” when it comes to faith. “We’ve got a parish of 3,000 families where I’m at, and I can scan any Mass and maybe find five or ten young people sitting in the pews. And it’s not because we’re over-challenging them” in youth ministry, he said. “It’s because we’re not reaching out enough and we’re boring them out of the pews and we’re not giving them something worthy to really sink their busy lives and time into.”

Sacred sites await spiritual trekkers across Alaska

For millions of Christians, including those in Alaska, summer is spiritual pilgrimage time. But if Alaskan pilgrims can’t make the long journey to Lourdes or the Holy Land, they can still make little pilgrimages — in the Far North. Here, the Catholic Anchor lists a few holy sites in Alaska ripe for spiritual venturing.
“We are all pilgrims,” Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has explained. And that pilgrimage is a “journey to Heaven,” he added – one in which the faithful are on a “perennial mission of proclaiming before the world the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Alaska couples address misconceptions of Catholic birth regulation

Why do many Catholic women – including Alaskans – use contraception? Area experts say couples aren’t hearing enough at church, from their doctors, or at home about Natural Family Planning (NFP), the natural and ethical way to regulate the birth of children. Lana Persson of Anchorage said she has never heard a homily on NFP. There was no mention of it in her catechism class before she converted to Catholicism as an adult.

Anchorage monastery’s mission continues after 2 founding nuns die

“A very diverse yet tightly-knit spiritual family has grown up around the monastery,” explained Therese Syren, a parishioner of Holy Family Cathedral, whose family was instrumental in building the monastery 30 years ago. “Any given day one can find a half-dozen nationalities represented in the congregation at Holy Mass there,” she said. The deaths of the monastery’s two eldest nuns are great losses, but their congregation’s mission is unchanged, explained Father Lilly. “Their work will definitely continue,” he said.

Alaska bill aims to legalize doctor-prescribed suicide

Anchorage Archbishop Roger Schwietz, who leads 30,000 Catholics across Southcentral Alaska, strongly opposes the bill, saying it is not about granting people a so-called “right to die,” but pushing “doctors to prescribe lethal drugs to kill people.”
“In a state with a suicide rate twice the national average, we are now proposing that it should be legal in some instances,” Archbishop Schwietz told the Catholic Anchor. “What kind of message does this send to our youth? In their young minds, they look at life without the practical experience that comes from age. They may view their situation as equally depressing or as terminal as someone with an illness. They see no way out. ‘If it’s okay for those who have no hope of regaining their health to kill themselves, why can’t I?’”

Anchorage cathedral shocked but resolute in responding to vandalism

During daylight hours in early December, Holy Family Cathedral was vandalized. Nearly life-size, solid-wood statues, including one of the Holy Family — the Infant Jesus, Blessed Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph grouped together — were toppled to the floor, the main altar was stripped, and even the top of the tabernacle was knocked to the ground. That night, two intruders tried to break into the second floor rooms of the priests’ residence — steps from the church. These acts are part of a growing litany of attacks against the cathedral: In November, someone torched an outdoor statue of Mary and defecated across the church courtyard facing busy 5th Avenue. In 2013 someone charged the altar during Mass; in 2012 two priests were physically assaulted. The violence has left local Catholics wondering how the cathedral walks the fine line between keeping doors open to all comers and preserving peace and reverence for the house of God.

Mysteries & miracles of Christmas Midnight Mass

Every year, it comes upon a midnight clear or a midnight snowy in Alaska. For at least the last 1,600 years, Catholics around the world have been venturing to church in the middle of a dark December night to celebrate the birth of Christ. The Christmas Midnight Mass is a unique liturgy honoring the Infant Savior — the everlasting Light that brightened the dark streets of little Bethlehem and all of human history.

Catholic & Protestant groups come together on common cultural causes

For 500 years, since the rupture of Christian history by the Protestant Reformation, Catholics and Protestants have been on opposite sides of a theological battlefield. Now they are joining arms on some of society’s greatest moral debates — abortion, euthanasia, same-sex marriage, to name a few. “While they were carrying on these [theological] battles, just a few decades ago, they found out that…the whole social and moral scene had collapsed,” Catholic attorney Bob Flint of Anchorage told the Catholic Anchor in an interview. “The world changed,” he said.

Copyright © 2025 Catholic Anchor Online - All Rights Reserved