Andy Telli, Tennessee Register
October
5, 2007
http://www.dioceseofnashville.com/article_homemission.htm
In home mission dioceses across the country, religious communities
of priests, sisters and brothers have long worked to bring the
faith to all people and to serve them, whether it be working as
educators, or in health care, or with the poor, or in areas where
the Catholic Church wasn’t present.
“The
church exists to do the mission of Jesus,” said Father Wil
Steinbacher, a Glenmary priest living and working in Nashville.
“And the mission of Jesus was to bring the reign of God
… the intense love of God to fruition.”
As he looked
around, Father Steinbacher saw other religious communities doing
the mission of Jesus as they served in home mission dioceses,
those local churches where Catholics might be isolated and their
numbers relatively small. But the religious communities often
worked alone in pursuing the mission of Jesus.
“We
do the mission of the church independently,” Father Steinbacher
said. “There is little collaboration.”
So several
years ago he began working with others, such as David Byers of
the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, toward bringing a variety
of men’s and women’s religious communities together
so they could join hands in doing the church’s mission.
The result was the Home Mission Leadership Conference, which held
its annual meeting in Nashville Sept. 24-26.
The conference
includes representatives from several religious communities, including
Glenmary, which serves in the Diocese of Nashville, Josephite
Fathers and Brothers, Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed
Trinity, Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity, Priests
of the Sacred Heart, Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, Dominican
Southern Province, Ursuline Sisters of Mount St. Joseph and Victory
Noll Missionary Sisters. The conference also includes representatives
from the Catholic Church Extension Society and the U.S. Conference
of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat on the Home Missions.
“Knowing
that each of us had our charism, this was the way, I thought,
if we collaborated, maybe the mission can be enhanced,”
Father Steinbacher said.
Over the years,
the group identified several areas where they might collaborate
and in the last three years have moved forward with a plan to
implement the first effort: to help home mission dioceses with
the formation of lay ecclesial ministers.
During the
recent meeting in Nashville, the conference members voted to pursue
this goal through the Congar Institute for Ministry Development
of the Southern Dominican Province, agreeing to share in the cost
and the oversight of the institute’s work through membership
of its board.
The institute’s
director, Father Wayne Cavalier, O.P., has already been working
with several dioceses, with the support of the Home Mission Leadership
Conference, offering the institute’s services to help their
lay ecclesial minister formation programs.
“Because
of the declining numbers of priests and religious, lay people
are taking on more responsibility for ministries,” Father
Cavalier said. “But they don’t have the same opportunities
for education and formation that priests and religious have had.
Dioceses are doing their best to provide that, but resources often
are limited.
“By
our collaboration, we can help to augment the efforts those dioceses
are making,” he added, “and at the same time, pass
on our education, our experience and our charisms.”
Carrying
on charisms
Each order
is founded in response to a specific situation, such as the need
for schools, health care, or pastoral services, Father Cavalier
said. “That response becomes their charism. It’s sort
of their mission.”
As the numbers
of religious community members who can carry on their charisms
is declining, Father Steinbacher said, the needs are growing.
At the same
time, the church is calling more lay people to answer their baptismal
call to participate in the mission of the church by bringing their
faith to the world.
“We
see the growing influence of lay people as a really significant
movement of the Holy Spirit,” Father Steinbacher said.
‘Helpful
advice’
The Home Missions
Leadership Conference’s Collaborative Ministry Development
Initiative, which will be administered by Father Cavalier and
the Congar Institute, offers full-service consultations for home
mission dioceses.
One of the
first steps of Father Cavalier was to identify people in the communities
participating in the Home Missions Leadership Conference who have
skills and expertise that could help in the formation of lay ecclesial
ministers.
He has a list
of about 100 people he can use as a resource, Father Cavalier
said. “That’s a strength of the project.”
If invited
by a diocese to do a consultation, Father Cavalier and others
will do an inventory of all programs and resources a diocese has
for lay ecclesial ministry formation, he said.
The next step
is to identify the gaps in formation, Father Cavalier said, and
recommend a plan to fill those gaps, using existing programs if
they are available.
“We
want it to be an organized response in that diocese,” Father
Cavalier said, “a plan that meets the specific needs of
that diocese.”
One of the
institute’s first consultations has been with the Diocese
of Salt Lake City, which is facing booming growth in the Catholic
population but a shortage of priests and religious.
“In
the 1950s we had as many as 200 sisters in the diocese,”
working in hospitals, schools and parishes, said Susan Cook Northway,
diocesan director of religious education. “They were doing
the evangelizing and catechesis in this diocese. There aren’t
sisters to replace them.”
So the diocese
is looking to lay people to fill those leadership roles in ministry,
Northway said.
The diocese
recently completed its first year in a new lay ecclesial ministry
formation program in collaboration with the Satellite
Theological Education Program through the University
of Notre Dame’s Office of Church Life.
The program
offers online training, which is a huge advantage in the Salt
Lake City Diocese, which covers the entire state of Utah, Northway
said. “We’re so far apart, it’s hard for people
to commit” to traveling several hours each weekend for training,
she said.
Using the
internet, the 31 people in the program can receive instruction
in their homes from experts around the country, Northway explained.
“We
hope this is a core of leadership that will help where they’re
needed and be able to train other people and put together plans
for parishes in collaboration with the pastors and the deacons,”
Northway said.
The diocese
is hopeful the Congar Institute can help with specific advice
on how to integrate lay ecclesial ministers in parishes already
being served by priests and deacons, Northway said. “I think
they’ll give us helpful advice.”
