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Kramis crams a lot into 50 years
(Continued from page 8.)
Griffin begins with a passage from
As You Like It, a comic play writ-
tea by Shakespeare, an English
playwright who was suspected
0t Catholic tendencies at a time
hen London and Rome were very
aluch at odds.
The passage describes the first
.lf: of man as being that of "the
nt, mewling and puking in the
aUrse's arms" and says "the last
ene of all is second childishness
alld mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans
eyes, sans taste, sans everything."
Sans is an old way of saying
Without, and it seems that Kramis
d Griffin are sans guile when it
c0aaes to the final age. Code, Com-
raunity and Ministry was pub-
liahed in 1992, and since then Grif-
thl has since gone to his reward. He
tote: "Retirement. This ends this
ange, eventful history. I've been
h to find no references in canon
law to that last scene of all." He
d0es allow that possible exceptions
. the official silence on the age of
llere oblivion" when man is "sans
r..hing " may be those canons
ting church authorities to
ak.le provision for the pension of
red bishops and priests.
LIYHE CLIMB OF life," he told
gathering. "The story of Jesus
be summed up as three move-
ts: climbing out of hatred to
(t' climbing out of exclusion to
:itision, climbing out of retalia-
ito reconciliation. This takes a
_ime of learning and climbing,
I have been so blessed these
Years to have so many good Pe:e
on the rope to teach me thes
lessons as we climb together
,
od s full glory."
yen that he is only semi-re-
il and still gives a stirring hom-
i as a Catholic sermon is called,
,ter Kramis seems to be shift-
,.ears from the fifth age of man
e sixth, with Shakespeare de-
ping the one as when we are
:ml of wise saws and modern in-
-ICeS"
and the other as the time
n "one shifts into the lean and
tbPered pantaloon, with spec,
€les on nose and pouch on side.
days his pouch is full of fond
ries and thoughts about
Vatican II shed new light on
l er, the Holy Scriptures and
1 justice. , ....
There was a strong emphasis,
IQ on family life and the,need for
: gthening the family, he said
1 interview with this newspa-
was after Vatican II that
ish replaced Latin as the lan-
e of the mass in the United
es and the Catholic church
hed out to the Christi fidelis,
k' is Latin for the people Kra-
calls "our Christian brothers
Sisters."
PRELATES of Vatican
considered the role of con-
in Catholicism and put
emphasis on the role of the
as Catholics who are not
priesthood are also called.
days the laity help to lead
services and do more and
of the heavy lifting when it
to spreading the Word of
is when we
with God and His voice
in our depth," Kramis said.
that speaks volumes about
then and where we
well-thumbed copy of the
The Documents of Vati-
Speaks volumes about the
man's striving in this regard be-
cause the first word on the first
page is "Conscience" written in his
own hand and directing the read-
er to a passage in the book titled,
"The Dignity of the Moral Con-
science." It reads: "In the depths of
his conscience, man detects a law
which does not impose upon him-
self, but which holds him to obe-
dience. Always summoning him to
love good and avoid evil, the voice
of conscience can when necessary
speak to his heart more specifi-
cally: do this, shun that. For man
has written in his heart the law of
God."
The "good conscience" which
Kramis finds in his moments
alone with God has been his guide
through many things. After com-
pleting his studies in canon law,
he spent 13 years at the Chancery
of the Seattle Archdiocese, that
being the headquarters of Catholi-
cism in this part of the state and
he being the Secretary of the Mar-
riage Tribunal.
THAT ASSIGNMENT put him
in the vanguard of the changes in
the church wrought by Vatican II
in that the tribunal is charged with
considering petitions of dissolu-
tion, which is a Catholic variation
on divorce. Canon law prohibits
divorced Catholics from marrying
again in the church without a dis-
solution. In the years before Vati-
can II, dissolutions could be very
hard to get, and they required the
petitioner to demonstrate that his
or her marriage lacked the funda-
mentals of faithfulness, perma-
nency or the will and the means of
having children. After the council
the church recognized new grounds
for a dissolution by allowing that a
couple didn't have a marriage of
the heart and the soul in the first
place if they were too young or dis-
tracted to know what they were
doing when they tied the knot.
After his stint with the tribu-
nal, Father Kramis moved on to
become pastor of Saint Theresa's
Catholic Church in Federal Way,
and he invited a friend by the
name of Joan Walker to establish
a place that he said "came to be
known as the Home" where people
could take contemplative retreats
and find a haven in times of tran-
sition. In one year they welcomed
more than 200 people who were
looking for a little "quiet time,"
and over the years they provided
a kind of sanctuary to those in
need of it: a couple of men who
were going through a divorce and
a married priest who dreamed of
returning to active ministry in the
Catholic church; a woman dying of
cancer and a female graduate of
Yale Divinity School who was be-
ing stalked.
"She came to us to avoid this
guy," Kramis said of the latter
lady.
The rest of her story is a happy
one, though not without enough
twists and turns for another
Shakespearean comedy. She found
herself at cross purposes with the
church authorities after she start-
ed preaching the Word of God at
Saint Theresa's and got orders
from the Vatican to cease and de-
sist. "They were cracking down all
over the place at that time," Kra-
mis said.
DETERMINED THAT her
conscience not be stifled by the
Roman Curia, the woman became
an Episcopalian and thus found
herself in a congregation that is
catholic in form but not Roman in
authority. She was drawn to the
Episcopal sect, in part, because
it allows the ordination of female
priests but then found herself mar-
ried to an Episcopal clergyman.
After finding that her duties as a
cleric's wife were keeping her just
about as busy as a woman could
be, she returned to the Catholic
church. Kramis finds all this to be
very much in the spirit of Vatican
II.
"In the church today there are
many models of the church," he
said. "The church has prided itself
on diversity."
A sadder note is sounded by the
case of Father James McGreal, a
Catholic priest who had been ac-
cused of molesting boys. Archbish-
op Raymond Hunthausen asked
Kramis and Walker to work with
McGreal and do what they could
to help him. Kramis and a psy-
chologist met with McGreal twice
a day in the hope of getting him to
change his ways, but this was to
no avail. There was something of
a flap when the word got out, but
the congregation at Saint There-
sa's forgave their pastor some time
ago, and he now regrets not hav-
ing told them that McGreal was in
the vicinity.
McGreal lives far, far away now,
and Hunthausen lives in Montana,
the state of his birth and the place
of his retreat from the events that
dislodged him from his position
of leadership on August 21, 1991.
The archbishop was the youngest
of the Americans to sit at Vatican
II, and some of his actions in the
years after the council did not sit
well with Rome or Washington,
D.C. The Internal Revenue Ser-
vice garnisheed his wages after he
refused to pay taxes in a protest of
nuclear arms. The Vatican pres-
sured him to resign amid reports
about his liberal policies toward
birth control, divorce and homo-
sexuality. An investigation of the
concerns was conducted by Car-
dinal James Ratzinger, who now
sits atop the Catholic hierarchy as
Pope Benedict XVI.
AFTER SPENDING the
Eighties in Federal Way, the next
assignment for Kramis was in Ho-
quiam, where he was pastor of a
handful of small churches which
didn't have priests of their own.
Ever ready to comfort the afflict-
ed, his fbur-year ministry in Grays
Harbor County found him tending
to the troubles of lumberjacks and
homosexuals.
Come the day when some fun-
damentalist churchmen preaching
thereabouts got into the business
of gay baiting from their pulpits,
Kramis and some other minis-
ters took a stand against what he
calls "the mashing of homosexu-
als." Meanwhile the communities
of Grays Harbor County suffered
through the economic troubles that
were putting a hurt on the timber
industry. The people prayed and
Bill Quigg, a parishioner of Our
Lady of Good Help, became an
answer when he and his crew re-
tooled a pulp mill that had closed
into a paper mill that came to em-
ploy 250 people.
"That was a red-letter day,"
Kramis said. "A red-suspender
day, I would call it. I used to wear
my red suspenders when anything
special came up, like the loggers
with their red suspenders."
After five years in "the Harbor,"
as he calls his pasture as a "circuit
rider," Kramis entered his period
of semi-retirement. The last 10
years have found him helping out
at the Church of the Sacred Heart
and working with Walker at a re-
treat that has a smaller footprint
list but a longer reach. Among
their guests in Shelton has been
Rita Wuen, a Buddhist woman
from Hong Kong who still writes
them every year.
SOIL LIQUIDATION!:
Huge Inventory -- 40,000 Yards of Top Soil
Economy
Top Soil
$700per yard
Double
Screened
Top Soil
$99Sper yard
( Deliwry awfilable for
extra charge --
5 yard minimum)
Our Topsoil is:
* Composted
• Sludge-free
* Earth-friendly
Bill McTurnal Enterprises
• Beauty Bark • Land Clearing * Excavating * Hauling
• Danger Tree Removal • Demolition • Drainage • Site Preparatior
• Forestry Consultant • We Buy Timber
it Union€
It's more than just business.
Here, #'spersonal.
Shelton • Elma. McCleary
800.426.5657 • www.ourcu.com
CASINi
Thursday, May 17, 2007 - Shelton-Mason County Journal - Page 9
Kramis crams a lot into 50 years
(Continued from page 8.)
Griffin begins with a passage from
As You Like It, a comic play writ-
tea by Shakespeare, an English
playwright who was suspected
0t Catholic tendencies at a time
hen London and Rome were very
aluch at odds.
The passage describes the first
.lf: of man as being that of "the
nt, mewling and puking in the
aUrse's arms" and says "the last
ene of all is second childishness
alld mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans
eyes, sans taste, sans everything."
Sans is an old way of saying
Without, and it seems that Kramis
d Griffin are sans guile when it
c0aaes to the final age. Code, Com-
raunity and Ministry was pub-
liahed in 1992, and since then Grif-
thl has since gone to his reward. He
tote: "Retirement. This ends this
ange, eventful history. I've been
h to find no references in canon
law to that last scene of all." He
d0es allow that possible exceptions
. the official silence on the age of
llere oblivion" when man is "sans
r..hing " may be those canons
ting church authorities to
ak.le provision for the pension of
red bishops and priests.
LIYHE CLIMB OF life," he told
gathering. "The story of Jesus
be summed up as three move-
ts: climbing out of hatred to
(t' climbing out of exclusion to
:itision, climbing out of retalia-
ito reconciliation. This takes a
_ime of learning and climbing,
I have been so blessed these
Years to have so many good Pe:e
on the rope to teach me thes
lessons as we climb together
,
od s full glory."
yen that he is only semi-re-
il and still gives a stirring hom-
i as a Catholic sermon is called,
,ter Kramis seems to be shift-
,.ears from the fifth age of man
e sixth, with Shakespeare de-
ping the one as when we are
:ml of wise saws and modern in-
-ICeS"
and the other as the time
n "one shifts into the lean and
tbPered pantaloon, with spec,
€les on nose and pouch on side.
days his pouch is full of fond
ries and thoughts about
Vatican II shed new light on
l er, the Holy Scriptures and
1 justice. , ....
There was a strong emphasis,
IQ on family life and the,need for
: gthening the family, he said
1 interview with this newspa-
was after Vatican II that
ish replaced Latin as the lan-
e of the mass in the United
es and the Catholic church
hed out to the Christi fidelis,
k' is Latin for the people Kra-
calls "our Christian brothers
Sisters."
PRELATES of Vatican
considered the role of con-
in Catholicism and put
emphasis on the role of the
as Catholics who are not
priesthood are also called.
days the laity help to lead
services and do more and
of the heavy lifting when it
to spreading the Word of
is when we
with God and His voice
in our depth," Kramis said.
that speaks volumes about
then and where we
well-thumbed copy of the
The Documents of Vati-
Speaks volumes about the
man's striving in this regard be-
cause the first word on the first
page is "Conscience" written in his
own hand and directing the read-
er to a passage in the book titled,
"The Dignity of the Moral Con-
science." It reads: "In the depths of
his conscience, man detects a law
which does not impose upon him-
self, but which holds him to obe-
dience. Always summoning him to
love good and avoid evil, the voice
of conscience can when necessary
speak to his heart more specifi-
cally: do this, shun that. For man
has written in his heart the law of
God."
The "good conscience" which
Kramis finds in his moments
alone with God has been his guide
through many things. After com-
pleting his studies in canon law,
he spent 13 years at the Chancery
of the Seattle Archdiocese, that
being the headquarters of Catholi-
cism in this part of the state and
he being the Secretary of the Mar-
riage Tribunal.
THAT ASSIGNMENT put him
in the vanguard of the changes in
the church wrought by Vatican II
in that the tribunal is charged with
considering petitions of dissolu-
tion, which is a Catholic variation
on divorce. Canon law prohibits
divorced Catholics from marrying
again in the church without a dis-
solution. In the years before Vati-
can II, dissolutions could be very
hard to get, and they required the
petitioner to demonstrate that his
or her marriage lacked the funda-
mentals of faithfulness, perma-
nency or the will and the means of
having children. After the council
the church recognized new grounds
for a dissolution by allowing that a
couple didn't have a marriage of
the heart and the soul in the first
place if they were too young or dis-
tracted to know what they were
doing when they tied the knot.
After his stint with the tribu-
nal, Father Kramis moved on to
become pastor of Saint Theresa's
Catholic Church in Federal Way,
and he invited a friend by the
name of Joan Walker to establish
a place that he said "came to be
known as the Home" where people
could take contemplative retreats
and find a haven in times of tran-
sition. In one year they welcomed
more than 200 people who were
looking for a little "quiet time,"
and over the years they provided
a kind of sanctuary to those in
need of it: a couple of men who
were going through a divorce and
a married priest who dreamed of
returning to active ministry in the
Catholic church; a woman dying of
cancer and a female graduate of
Yale Divinity School who was be-
ing stalked.
"She came to us to avoid this
guy," Kramis said of the latter
lady.
The rest of her story is a happy
one, though not without enough
twists and turns for another
Shakespearean comedy. She found
herself at cross purposes with the
church authorities after she start-
ed preaching the Word of God at
Saint Theresa's and got orders
from the Vatican to cease and de-
sist. "They were cracking down all
over the place at that time," Kra-
mis said.
DETERMINED THAT her
conscience not be stifled by the
Roman Curia, the woman became
an Episcopalian and thus found
herself in a congregation that is
catholic in form but not Roman in
authority. She was drawn to the
Episcopal sect, in part, because
it allows the ordination of female
priests but then found herself mar-
ried to an Episcopal clergyman.
After finding that her duties as a
cleric's wife were keeping her just
about as busy as a woman could
be, she returned to the Catholic
church. Kramis finds all this to be
very much in the spirit of Vatican
II.
"In the church today there are
many models of the church," he
said. "The church has prided itself
on diversity."
A sadder note is sounded by the
case of Father James McGreal, a
Catholic priest who had been ac-
cused of molesting boys. Archbish-
op Raymond Hunthausen asked
Kramis and Walker to work with
McGreal and do what they could
to help him. Kramis and a psy-
chologist met with McGreal twice
a day in the hope of getting him to
change his ways, but this was to
no avail. There was something of
a flap when the word got out, but
the congregation at Saint There-
sa's forgave their pastor some time
ago, and he now regrets not hav-
ing told them that McGreal was in
the vicinity.
McGreal lives far, far away now,
and Hunthausen lives in Montana,
the state of his birth and the place
of his retreat from the events that
dislodged him from his position
of leadership on August 21, 1991.
The archbishop was the youngest
of the Americans to sit at Vatican
II, and some of his actions in the
years after the council did not sit
well with Rome or Washington,
D.C. The Internal Revenue Ser-
vice garnisheed his wages after he
refused to pay taxes in a protest of
nuclear arms. The Vatican pres-
sured him to resign amid reports
about his liberal policies toward
birth control, divorce and homo-
sexuality. An investigation of the
concerns was conducted by Car-
dinal James Ratzinger, who now
sits atop the Catholic hierarchy as
Pope Benedict XVI.
AFTER SPENDING the
Eighties in Federal Way, the next
assignment for Kramis was in Ho-
quiam, where he was pastor of a
handful of small churches which
didn't have priests of their own.
Ever ready to comfort the afflict-
ed, his fbur-year ministry in Grays
Harbor County found him tending
to the troubles of lumberjacks and
homosexuals.
Come the day when some fun-
damentalist churchmen preaching
thereabouts got into the business
of gay baiting from their pulpits,
Kramis and some other minis-
ters took a stand against what he
calls "the mashing of homosexu-
als." Meanwhile the communities
of Grays Harbor County suffered
through the economic troubles that
were putting a hurt on the timber
industry. The people prayed and
Bill Quigg, a parishioner of Our
Lady of Good Help, became an
answer when he and his crew re-
tooled a pulp mill that had closed
into a paper mill that came to em-
ploy 250 people.
"That was a red-letter day,"
Kramis said. "A red-suspender
day, I would call it. I used to wear
my red suspenders when anything
special came up, like the loggers
with their red suspenders."
After five years in "the Harbor,"
as he calls his pasture as a "circuit
rider," Kramis entered his period
of semi-retirement. The last 10
years have found him helping out
at the Church of the Sacred Heart
and working with Walker at a re-
treat that has a smaller footprint
list but a longer reach. Among
their guests in Shelton has been
Rita Wuen, a Buddhist woman
from Hong Kong who still writes
them every year.
SOIL LIQUIDATION!:
Huge Inventory -- 40,000 Yards of Top Soil
Economy
Top Soil
$700per yard
Double
Screened
Top Soil
$99Sper yard
( Deliwry awfilable for
extra charge --
5 yard minimum)
Our Topsoil is:
* Composted
• Sludge-free
* Earth-friendly
Bill McTurnal Enterprises
• Beauty Bark • Land Clearing * Excavating * Hauling
• Danger Tree Removal • Demolition • Drainage • Site Preparatior
• Forestry Consultant • We Buy Timber
it Union€
It's more than just business.
Here, #'spersonal.
Shelton • Elma. McCleary
800.426.5657 • www.ourcu.com
CASINi
Thursday, May 17, 2007 - Shelton-Mason County Journal - Page 9