August 12, Saturday: 8:00 AM and 5:00 PM Vigil Thursdays: 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM Sunday: 7:30 AM, 9:45 AM, 11:30 AM Every Day: 15 minutes before Mass

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1 August 12, 2018 Welcome to our Little on the Hill Mass Schedule Sacrament of Reconciliation Monday - Friday: 7:30 AM Available Saturdays: 4:00 PM - 4:45 PM Saturday: 8:00 AM and 5:00 PM Vigil Thursdays: 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM Sunday: 7:30 AM, 9:45 AM, 11:30 AM Every Day: 15 minutes before Mass Holy Days: posted in the Bulletin Baptism & Marriage Preparation Eucharistic Adoration Please contact Parish Office (203) First Tuesday 7:00 PM 8:00 PM Anointing of the Sick Every Friday 8:30 AM - 8:00 PM Please contact Parish Office (203) Office hours: Monday - Thursday 9:00 AM - 4:00 PM ; Friday 9:00 AM - 3:00 PM -CHURCH IS HANDICAPPED ACCESSIBLE-

2 Liturgical Schedule - MONDAY 08/13/18-7:30 AM Healing for Millie Mietelski Clif Kolwicz Rdgs: Ez 1:2-5, 24-28c Mt 17: TUESDAY 08/14/18 - St. Maximilian Kolbe, Priest and Martyr 7:30 AM Claudir Zocolotti Deb Isaacson Rdgs: Ez 2:8-3:4 Mt 18:1-5,10, :00 PM Dr. John Fatse Fr. Peter Lectors - R. Doran & ML Strano Ministers of the Blood - J. Garofalo & Minister of the Body - Altar Servers - C. Vogel Music Ministry - St. Cecilia Choir Rdgs: 1 Chr 15:3-4, 15-16; 16:1-2 Cor 15:54b-57 Lk 11: WEDNESDAY 08/15/18 - The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary 7:30 AM All Souls in Purgatory Rena Ahn Lectors - D. Fischer & G. Kula Ministers of the Blood - Minister of the Body - Altar Servers - E. & A. Vas 12:10 PM Parishioners Living and Deceased Lectors - D. Pietras Ministers of the Blood - V. Giordano Minister of the Body - P. Schulze Altar Servers - JP. Miranda Rdgs: Rv 11:19a, 12:1-6a, 10ab 1Cor 15:20-27 Lk 1: THURSDAY 08/16/18-7:30 AM Shelia M. Cutler Fr. Peter Rdgs: Ez 12:1-12 Mt 18:21-19:1 7:00 PM Confessions - FRIDAY 08/17/18-7:30 AM Geraldine Strusky Ginger Wohlfarth Rdgs: Ez 16:1-15, 60, 63 Mt 19:3-12 -SATURDAY 08/18/18-8:00 AM Patrick Rousseau Fr. Peter Rdgs: Ez 18:1-10, 13b, Mt 19: :00 PM Rev. Rose Ann Foege Nannette Scudiero Lectors - B. Miazga Ministers of the Blood - ML. & Roger Strano Minister of the Body - P. Schultz Altar Servers - JP Miranda Music Ministry - St. Cecilia Cantor Liturgical Schedule continued - SUNDAY 08/19/18 - Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time 7:30 AM Parishioners Living and Deceased Lectors - C. Gehring & C. Volpe, Jr. Ministers of the Blood - C. Bates & R. Doran Minister of the Body - J. Freitas Altar Servers - K. Kozlowski, K. Viera- Hanley, R. Posca 9:45 AM Connie and Vinny Vonzwehl Fr. Peter Lector - R. Volpe Ministers of the Blood - A. Scalzo & S. Schirmer Minister of the Body - C. Stanley Altar Servers - M. & J. Suess & B. Goodman 11:30 AM Matt and Mary Patren Patren Family B&W Matt and Mary Patren Patren Family Lector - D. Isaacson Ministers of the Blood - P. Nero & J. Peters Minister of the Body - J. McNamara Altar Servers - A. & E. Vas Music Ministry - Contemporary Choir Rdgs: Prv 9:1-6 Eph 5:15-20 Jn 6:51-58 As a Parish community, we continue to lift every family individually up in our daily prayers; praying for the spiritual, physical, and emotional health of each member of the family. Please be sure to include them in your daily prayers. Sunday: Ellen Czyz & Family Monday: Stanizlaw and Anna Dabrowski & Family Tuesday: Edward and Deborah Dachenhausen & Family Wednesday: Fernando and Maria Dacunha & Family Thursday: Matthew and Bridget Dalen & Family Friday: Catherine Dalton & Family Saturday: Gerald and Carol Daly & Family Sunday: Vincent and Denise Dascano & Family Your prayers are requested for our hospitalized parishioners, family members, and friends who are bearing the Cross of Suffering: Fran Wilkes, Bob & Pat Extance, Herminia Genao, Therese Slesinsky, Emily Donofrio, Pat Rooney, the Morosky Family, & Homebound. Please also pray for those suffering senseless violence and racial tensions.

3 Parish Staff Pastor Fr. Peter Towsley In Residence Fr. Jean-Rony Philippe Pastoral Administrator Dan Tomé Finance Administrator Marie Fitzgerald Office Administrator Suzanne Najman Parish Building & Grounds Manny Guaman Music Ministry Director Suzanne Najman Finance Council Chairperson Nannette Scudiero Parish Pastoral Council Chairperson Karen Cerno Parish Office Bulletin Editor Have you signed up for online giving yet? It is quick and easy. No need to remember your envelope! To sign up, click the WeShare button in the APP or go to: Stewardship Our Financial View Weekend of July 28 th and 29 th $ 3, Going on Vacation? Please visit our website to set up your online giving account. Thank You for your continued generosity! 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM This Week in the Parish - MONDAY 08/13/18-6:00 PM - 9:30 PM Meeting and Rectory Basement Dinner - TUESDAY 08/14/ WEDNESDAY 08/15/ THURSDAY 08/16/18-6:45 PM - 8:00 PM Rehearsal - FRIDAY 08/17/18-7:00 PM - 9:00 PM Rehearsal - SATURDAY 08/18/ SUNDAY 08/19/18-6:30 PM - 8:30 PM Meeting Parish Center Adorers Corner Scheduled for August 10 th 8:30 AM - 9:00 AM Georgia Kula 9:00 AM -10:00 AM Georgia Kula & Janice McNamara 10:00 AM -11:00 AM Geraldine Lancey 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM Joan Peters 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM Tom DiGiovanni 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM School of the Word 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM Fran & Sonia Kieras 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Ben Slesinsky & Larry Martin 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM Peggy Dyer & Deb Isaacson 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM Joe Kieras 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM Alessandra Zocolotti 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM Cyndi Morosky &Leoneidia Sousa If you would like to volunteer to be an adorer, please contact the Parish Office or office@sacredheartdanbury.org If you are unable to make your assigned time please find a substitute. Jesus must never be left unattended. Thank you!

4 The 2019 Mass book will be opening for Mass intentions on Monday August 20 at 9:00am. Please hold all 2019 requests until that time. Faith Formation Registration is now OPEN The new Registration form is available on the website s Faith Formation page under Religious Education. Payment can be made online in WeShare. The Diocese of Bridgeport is interested in hiring an educator to teach an after-school enrichment program for 3 and 4 year-olds at St. Peter School. Activities will be provided for student work. Some time will be spent assisting students and parents during cooperative activities. This is a late afternoon into evening program Tues, Wed, Thurs beginning August 21 for six week sessions during the school year. Submit resume to: St. Peter School 98 Main St. Danbury, CT Attn: Mrs. D. Hocking, Coord. Pre-School Enrichment Program dhocking@spsdanbury.org Sacred Heart has received donations: In Loving Memory of : + Helen Yakacki From: Stanley Jasinski Joseph Jasinski OUTDOOR MASS & PICNIC Sunday :30am All Ministers take note: Please remember that when you are exercising your ministry, you should be dressed appropriately.

5 WHY THE SCIENCES WILL NEVER DISPROVE THE EXISTENCE OF GOD Given the ruminations of Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, one might have thought that the absolute limit of scientistic arrogance had been reached. But think again. Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology, was quoted in a recent news article asserting that science is on the verge of providing a complete understanding of the universe an explication, it goes without saying, that precludes the antiquated notion of God altogether. Before addressing the God issue specifically, let me make a simple observation. Though the sciences might be able to explain the chemical make-up of pages and ink, they will never be able to reveal the meaning of a book; and though they might make sense of the biology of the human body, they will never tell us why a human act is moral or immoral; and though they might disclose the cellular structure of oil and canvas, they will never determine why a painting is beautiful. And this is not because science is for the moment insufficiently developed, it is because the scientific method cannot, even in principle, explore such matters, which belong to a qualitatively different category of being than the proper subject matter of the sciences. The claim that science could ever provide a total understanding of reality as a whole overlooks the rather glaring fact that meaning, truth, beauty, morality, purpose, etc., are all ingredients in the universe. But as is usually the case with scientistic speculation, Carroll s thought is designed, above all, to eliminate God as a subject of serious intellectual discourse. The first and most fundamental problem is that, like Hawking, Dawkins and Dennett, Carroll doesn t seem to know what Biblical people mean by God. With the advance of the modern physical sciences, he asserts, there remains less and less room for God to operate, and hence less and less need to appeal to him as an explanatory cause. This is a contemporary reiteration of Pierre-Simon Laplace s rejoinder when the Emperor Napoleon asked the famous astronomer how God fit into his mechanistic system: I have no need of that hypothesis. But God, as the classical Catholic intellectual tradition understands him, is not one cause, however great, among many; not one more item within the universe jockeying for position with other competing causes. Rather, God is, as Thomas Aquinas characterized him, ipsum esse, or the sheer act of to-be itself that power in and through which the universe in its totality exists. Once we grasp this, we see that no advance of the physical sciences could ever eliminate God or show that he is no longer required as an explaining cause, for the sciences can only explore objects and events within the finite cosmos. To demonstrate the relationship between God and the universe more clearly, it would be worthwhile to explore the most fundamental argument for God s existence, namely the argument from contingency. You and I are contingent (dependent) in our being in the measure that we eat and drink, breathe, and had parents; a tree is contingent inasmuch as its being is derived from seed, sun, soil, water, etc.; the solar system is contingent because it depends upon gravity and events in the wider galaxy. To account for a contingent reality, by definition we have to appeal to an extrinsic cause. But if that cause is itself contingent, we have to proceed further. This process of appealing to contingent causes in order to explain a contingent effect cannot go on indefinitely, for then the effect is never adequately explained. Hence, we must finally come to some reality that is not contingent on anything else, some ground of being whose very nature is to-be. This is precisely what Catholic theology means by God. Therefore, God is not one fussy cause within or alongside the universe; instead, he is the reason why there is a universe at all, why there is, as the famous formula has it, something rather than nothing. To ask the sophomoric question, Well, what caused God? is simply to show that the poser of the question has not grasped the nettle of the argument. Now Carroll seems to acknowledge the probative power of this sort of argument of first instance, but he makes the common scientistic mistake of identifying the first cause with matter or energy or even the universe itself in its endlessly fluctuating rhythms of inflation and deflation. But the problem with such explanations is this: they involve an appeal to patently contingent things or states of affairs. Energy or matter, for example, always exist in a particular modality or instantiation, which implies that they could just as well be in another modality or instantiation: here rather than there, up rather than down, this color rather than that, this speed rather than that, etc. But this in turn means that their being in one state rather than another requires an explanation or an appeal to an extrinsic cause. And the proposal of the fluctuating universe itself is just as much of a non-starter, for it involves the same problem simply writ large: how do you explain why the universe is expanding rather than contracting, at this rate rather than that, in this configuration rather than another, etc.? Finally, a cause of the very to-be of a contingent universe must be sought, and this cannot be anything in the universe, nor can it be the universe considered as a totality. It must be a reality whose very essence is to-be and hence whose perfection of existence is unlimited. As I have tried to demonstrate in very short compass, philosophy can shed light on the existence of God so construed. The one thing the sciences cannot ever do is disprove it.