SCHOOL ENROLLMENT UP 5 | GOODBYE, ST. JOSEPH’S HOSPITAL 6 | CONNECTING YOUNG ADULTS TO PARISHES

Growing ministry connects young adults to parishes, one another

By Joe Ruff The Catholic Spirit

The seed of an effort to attract young adults to the Church and its parishes was planted in 2017 with MSP Catholic — an online hub listing Catholic events in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, particularly in the Twin Cities.

With its regular updates on the Catholic Softball Group, Vespers at Lourdes and Catholic Beer Club, MSP Catholic drew the attention of Frank Kiesner, a 76-year-old retired entrepreneur and member of St. Patrick in Edina, who has a heart for the Church, young adults and seeing both grow.

“It doesn’t take a genius to realize that the future of the Church, and the growth of the Church, is communicating with young people in the modern world,” Kiesner said.

On top of a desire to reach young adults online, Kiesner began talking with friends about ways to invite people ages 20 to 40 to become leaders and supporters of parishes in the archdiocese. Parishes are building blocks of the Church and vital to its health, he said.

The result is CEND, or the Center for Evangelization and Discipleship, founded in 2020, with an office and recording studio in St. Patrick’s parish center, said Kiesner, who also is chairman of CEND’s five-member board.

In addition to acquiring MSP Catholic, CEND has hired a part-time operations manager and digital marketing specialist, Annie Tracy, who is overseeing MSP Catholic, setting up in-person and online events, and is eager to help parishes bring more young adults and their families into parish communities. CEND’s chaplain is Father Nels Gjengdahl, who is also chaplain of Holy Family Catholic High School in Victoria and sacramental minister for Sts. Peter and Paul in Loretto and St. Thomas in Corcoran. The organization’s theological adviser is Auxiliary Bishop Andrew Cozzens, who will remain as an adviser even after being installed Dec. 6 as the bishop of Crookston, Kiesner said.

Father Allen Kuss, St. Patrick’s pastor, said Kiesner approached him about workspace at the parish, and he was happy to help.

“It’s so important to evangelize young people,” said Father Kuss, adding that he plans to draw on the group’s expertise to help “engage with young adults, (a group) which is always difficult to capture.”

CEND also has contacted the leadership team of the Archdiocesan Synod, Kiesner said, in hopes CEND can assist as the archdiocese works toward a Synod Assembly in June that will help flesh out three themes for the archdiocese’s immediate future, including forming “youth and young adults in and for a Church that is always young.”

“A lot of parishes are well-oiled, with a bulletin, people come to Mass. But with the demographics of young adults, we need to reach out to where they are,” Kiesner said. “They are on websites, social media.”

Through its program Making Parish Home, CEND hopes to help parishes integrate digital tools into their programs, respond to new parishioners’ needs, and get excited about their own potential for growth, Kiesner said.

Young adults and parents care deeply about “Christ’s preaching and healing,” he said. “(CEND) is just a new envelope to carry that message.”

Tracy, 26, is a 2016 marketing graduate from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul who was involved with St. Paul’s Outreach ministry as a student on campus. After graduating, she worked for about four years in Minneapolis as a digital marketing strategist with a large technology consulting company.

“I was pulled kicking and screaming into the corporate world, but I learned a lot,” said Tracy, who was more attracted to a small business environment and felt called to work closely with the Church.

Approached by the group forming CEND, Tracy, a member of Holy Cross in northeast Minneapolis, agreed to become its operations manager. Unlike Mendota Heights-based SPO, which runs a college campus ministry, and St. Paul-based NET Ministries, which offers retreats to high schoolers, CEND is striving to reach recent college graduates and tie them into parishes, as well as young parents and others up to age 40, Tracy said.

“We wanted to form an apostolate outside the archdiocese, but connected to it, with the archbishop (Archbishop Bernard Hebda) always informed,” she said.

CEND continues to learn the needs and wishes of parishes and young adults, Tracy said. It advertised an online survey at the end of March through April and received 73 responses from young adults in the archdiocese. The results indicated young adults are looking to feel invited into a parish, with some reflecting that it took a long time for people to introduce themselves, she said. Young adults also are looking for regularly available sacraments, including Mass and confession, and they seek out young adult groups and young married couples with whom they can relate, Tracy said.

CEND also learns from and shares ideas with its seven-member advisory committee of young adult ministers and others, including Tim Cahill of the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul, the founder of MSP Catholic who now runs that site and CEND’s blog; Chris Kostelc, director of mission and faith formation at Holy Name of Jesus in Medina; and Jonathn Liedl, a writer for the National Catholic Register and columnist for The Catholic Spirit.

Their feedback has been instrumental in shaping how CEND hopes to help parishes increase young adult involvement in the Church, Tracy said.

Molly Schorr, 40, a member of CEND’s board who was in faith formation ministry in the archdiocese for 18 years, including 12 years as youth minister and director of parish life and evangelization at St. Vincent de Paul in Brooklyn Park, also is important in the parish involvement efforts, Tracy said. Now director of religious education at a parish in Sarasota, Florida, Schorr is in regular contact with CEND and returns to the Twin Cities to help. She also wrote and promotes a program titled “Return,” designed to help parents have fruitful conversations with adult children who have left the Church.

“The archdiocese has a lot of great young adult opportunities and communities,” Schorr said. “But how do you draw young people into the life of a parish? I mean, that’s what Christ calls us to do.”

Many parishes want to offer young adult ministry, “but they don’t know what that looks like,” Schorr said. “CEND is a gift because it can help bridge that gap.”

CEND has not entered into the work of a parish yet with Making Parish Home, but it hopes to meet with parish leaders, staff and parishioners of parishes that hire the organization to help determine strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and challenges in young adult ministry, Tracy said. It will seek to learn about young adults in each parish, what they are looking for and what they need. If necessary, CEND will help a parish build a young adult mission team with an introductory retreat, practical steps to take and a year of back-up support, she said.

“The parish is the community and the space where we come to understand our role in the body of the Church,” Schorr said. “It offers the sacraments, celebrates the Eucharist, shares the gifts of the Holy Spirit. It is the truest form of the essential Church that Christ built with his disciples at the Last Supper.”

MARY PAT THUNE | COURTESY CEND Young adults pose with Matt Birk, center, at an Oct. 6 Center for Evangelization and Discipleship event at St. Patrick in Edina that drew about 200 people, including 100 young adults.

CEND EVENTS

The Center for Evangelization and Discipleship, housed at St. Patrick in Edina, is taking a threepronged approach to involving young adults in the Church: Events and speakers, social media hub MSP Catholic and a program called Making Parish Home.

CEND’s Joe Davis Speaker Series, named in memory of a St. Patrick parishioner who was a senior executive at General Mills, and funded in part by Davis’ family, kicks off with noted Catholic author and speaker Chris Stefanik (pictured), 7 p.m. Nov. 30 at St. Patrick church. Tickets $25, $15 for students at catholiccend.org. On Oct. 6, CEND hosted an Evening with Matt Birk, active Catholic and Super Bowl champion, that also featured Bishop Andrew Cozzens. And on April 24, the organization held a one-day gathering with the GIVEN Institute, a leadership and faith formation organization for women of all ages. Both events were at St. Patrick.

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Contact Sr. Katherine Mullin, kathfmullin@gmail.com. Visit us at www.visitationmonasteryminneapolis.org.

Draft statement stresses Eucharist’s importance, not a need to deny it

By Carol Zimmermann Catholic News Service

At their June assembly, when the U.S. bishops debated a proposal to draft a statement on the Eucharist, some bishops asked if it would address denying Communion to Catholic politicians who support abortion. The draft of the statement sent to the bishops in October seems to put this question to rest, at least for now.

The statement has not been made public by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in advance of the Nov. 15-18 assembly of bishops. It was obtained by The Pillar and published Nov. 3 by the Catholic website.

Titled “The Mystery of the Eucharist in the Life of the Church,” the statement is at once both a reflection on the importance of the Eucharist in the life of the Catholic Church and a teaching document on what the Church has taught over the centuries. The 26-page statement is heavily footnoted.

In addition to the document on the Eucharist, the bishops are planning a National Eucharistic Revival, a three-year initiative that will culminate in a National Eucharistic Congress in 2024. As chair of the USCCB’s Committee on Evangelization and Catechesis, Bishop Andrew Cozzens, bishop-designate of Crookston, is leading the effort.

The statement, at least in this current draft, does essentially what Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Fort WayneSouth Bend, Indiana, told bishops it would do.

In a recorded video this fall produced by the USCCB to further explain the document and the planned upcoming revival on the Eucharist, Bishop Rhoades said the document will focus on how “the Eucharist is our greatest treasure as Catholics” and will look at different aspects of the Eucharist, particularly how it illustrates Christ’s sacrifice and is the real presence of Jesus, not just a symbol. The document, in its current form without amendments, does not specifically call out Catholic politicians who support abortion, including President Joe Biden, the second U.S. Catholic president, whose name came up during the June virtual meeting.

When the statement was first proposed to the body of bishops at their June assembly, some bishops said a strong rebuke of the president should be included in it because of Biden’s recent actions protecting and expanding abortion access, while others warned that this would portray the bishops as a partisan force during a time of bitter political divisions across the country.

At the end of their June discussion, Bishop Rhoades, who is chair of the Committee on Doctrine, said the document would not focus on denying Communion to people but on the importance of the sacrament.

He said the second half of the document will emphasize what Catholics should do with this deeper understanding and appreciation of the Eucharist, from more active participation at Mass to participating in devotions such as adoration and renewing their commitment to serve others.

And that is how the drafted document looks. It explains the importance of Communion, calling it a gift, and uses references from Scripture, prayers of the Church and Second Vatican Council documents to back this up. It also explains, citing words of the saints, how Communion is the real presence of Christ.

This transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, the document says, is “one of the central mysteries of the Catholic faith” and a “doorway through which we, like the saints and mystics before us, may enter into a deeper perception” of God’s presence.

The document notes, almost halfway through, the Vatican II document “Lumen Gentium” (The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church) describing the Eucharist as “the source and summit of the Christian life.”

It notes that as Catholics understand what the Eucharist means, they should more fully participate in Mass and also reach out to serve those in need, citing the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which says: “The Eucharist commits us to the poor.”

Toward the end, it mentions how Catholics should show reverence in receiving the Eucharist and also recognize that there are some sins that “rupture the communion we share with God and the Church.”

It distinguishes between mortal and venial sins — noting that the latter are the “sins and everyday faults” that do not break the covenant with God. “One commits a mortal sin,” the document says, “by freely, knowingly and willingly choosing to do something that involves grave matter and that is opposed to charity, opposed to love of God and neighbor.”

“One should not celebrate Mass or receive holy Communion in the state of mortal sin without having sought the sacrament of reconciliation and received absolution,” the document reminds Catholics.

Then, repeating what the bishops said in their 2006 document, “Happy Are Those Who Are Called to His Supper,” this draft document points out that if a Catholic in his or her personal life has “knowingly and obstinately” rejected the doctrines of the Church or its teaching on moral issues, that person should refrain from receiving Communion because it is “likely to cause scandal for others.”

The document concludes with examples of saints who were transformed by their reception of the Eucharist and their deep understanding of what it means. It urges those who have left the Church to come back, saying: “We miss you and we love you.”

Prior to the bishops’ initial discussion of this document, Cardinal Luis Ladaria, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, urged the bishops in a letter to proceed with caution in developing a national policy “to address the situation of Catholics in public office who support legislation allowing abortion, euthanasia or other moral evils.”

Pope Francis said on a Sept. 15 flight back from Bratislava, Slovakia, that he preferred not to comment directly on the issue of denying Communion in the U.S., but he urged U.S. bishops to take a pastoral approach rather than wade into the political sphere.

BOB ROLLER | CNS A priest prepares to distribute Communion during Mass in Washington in this 2011 photo.

Archbishop Gomez: Church must proclaim Christ ‘boldly’ in response to ‘woke’ movements

Catholic News Service

The Catholic Church must proclaim Jesus Christ “boldly” and “creatively” in the face of new secular movements that promote “social justice,” “wokeness” and “intersectionality,” among other beliefs, as the answer to all of society’s ills, Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez said Nov. 4.

“We need to tell our story of salvation in a new way, with charity and confidence, without fear,” he said.

Archbishop Gomez made the comments in a videotaped address for the upcoming 23rd Catholic and Public Life Congress in Madrid, which organizers said will focus on political correctness and “the dangers of this mega-ideology,” such as preventing debate and limiting freedoms.

He spoke on “the rise of new secular ideologies and movements for social change in the United States and the implications for the Catholic Church.”

The Church needs to understand these movements “as pseudo-religions, and even replacements and rivals to traditional Christian beliefs,” he said, because “they claim to offer what religion provides.”

“With the breakdown of the JudeoChristian worldview and the rise of secularism, political belief systems based on social justice or personal identity have come to fill the space that Christian belief and practice once occupied,” he said. “We all know that while there are unique conditions in the United States, similar broad patterns of aggressive secularization have long been at work in Spain and elsewhere in Europe,” he said.

“An elite leadership class has risen in our countries that has little interest in religion and no real attachments to the nations they live in or to local traditions or cultures,” said Archbishop Gomez, who is president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

“This group, which is in charge in corporations, governments, universities, the media, and in the cultural and professional establishments,” he said, “wants to establish what we might call a global civilization, built on a consumer economy and guided by science, technology, humanitarian values and technocratic ideas about organizing society.”

“There is no need for old-fashioned belief systems and religions,” he added. “In fact, as they see it, religion, especially Christianity, only gets in the way of the society they hope to build.”

Secularization means “deChristianization,” as many popes have pointed out, he said. “For years now, there has been a deliberate effort in Europe and America to erase the Christian roots of society and to suppress any remaining Christian influences.”

Archbishop Gomez noted the congress’ program alluded to “cancel culture” along with political correctness.

“We recognize that often what is being canceled and corrected are perspectives rooted in Christian beliefs — about human life and the human person, about marriage, the family and more. ... The ‘space’ that the Church and believing Christians are permitted to occupy is shrinking,” he said.

Amid the pandemic and government response to it, everyone noticed “dramatic social changes,” he said, but these changes were already at work and were just “accelerated” by the pandemic.

In the U.S., amid the tension and fear created by the pandemic and social isolation, “these movements were fully unleashed in our society” with the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, by a white policeman and the protests that followed in many cities, Archbishop Gomez said. “For many people in my country, myself included, (Floyd’s) tragedy became a stark reminder that racial and economic inequality are still deeply embedded in our society,” he said.

These new movements are part of a wider, “absolutely essential” discussion “about how to build an American society that expands opportunities for everyone, no matter what color their skin is or where they came from, or their economic status,” Archbishop Gomez added.

But people are increasingly turning to these “woke” movements, rather than religion, for “an explanation for events and conditions in the world,” he said. “Now more than ever,” he said, “the Church and every Catholic needs to know” the Christian story, “and proclaim it in all its beauty and truth.”

Catholics and other Christians, he said, believe “we are created in the image of God ... and we are saved through the dying and rising of Jesus Christ ... (who) calls us to follow him in faith, loving God and our neighbor, working to build his kingdom on earth, all in confident hope that we will have eternal life with him in the world to come.”

“Today’s critical theories and ideologies are profoundly atheistic,” he continued. “They deny the soul, the spiritual, transcendent dimension of human nature; or they think that it is irrelevant to human happiness. They reduce what it means to be human to essentially physical qualities — the color of our skin, our sex, our notions of gender, our ethnic background or our position in society.”

Pilgrim’s path: Parsing what the president said the pope said

HEADLINES

By Cindy Wooden Catholic News Service

If Pope Francis called President Joe Biden a “good Catholic,” as Biden told reporters, a ceramic tile the pope gave Biden may illustrate what he meant.

The painted 12-inch square tile depicts a pilgrim walking along the banks of the Tiber River toward the Vatican. But he is not there yet.

Pope Francis welcomed Biden to the Vatican Oct. 29, and the two met privately, assisted by two interpreters, for 75 minutes, a record for a papal audience with a head of state.

For more than a year, Pope Francis’ go-to gift for visiting government leaders has been either a plaque depicting a migrant family with the inscription, “Let’s fill our hands with other hands,” or a sculpture of a dove holding an olive branch with the inscription, “Be messengers of peace.”

But for Biden, the pope chose the pilgrim.

As Pope Francis has made clear throughout his pontificate, defining someone as a good Catholic or a good Christian does not mean canonizing them or approving of everything they say and do. Rather, good Christians recognize they are sinners in need of God’s forgiveness and grace, and they are committed to continuing the journey.

After meeting the pope, a reporter asked Biden if he and the pope had discussed abortion. Biden said no, “we just talked about the fact he was happy that I was a good Catholic, and I should keep receiving Communion.”

Asked if the pope really said that, the Vatican press office — as is normal in such cases — declined to comment, saying the meeting was private.

The Vatican’s official statement on the topics the pope and his secretary of state discussed with Biden included climate change, religious freedom, migration, the COVID-19 pandemic and the promotion of peace.

The statement made no mention of abortion, Communion or the state of Biden’s soul.

The president’s meeting with the pope came just over two weeks before the U.S. bishops are set to discuss a document on the meaning of the Eucharist, which a few bishops have said should include specific language about what constitutes worthiness to receive Communion and how politicians who support legalized abortion are not worthy to receive.

It would be impossible to think Pope Francis did not know the Biden administration supports legalized abortion and perhaps even that Biden renounced his longtime support for the Hyde Amendment, which banned federal funding for most abortions.

Throughout his political career, Biden has acknowledged the tensions between the Democratic Party and the Catholic Church over abortion, which the Church sees as the taking of an innocent human life.

But the president also must have seen the comments Pope Francis made recently when asked specifically about the question of giving Communion to Catholic politicians who support abortion.

“Abortion is more than a problem,” he told reporters Sept. 15. “Abortion is murder.”

But the question about giving Communion is not theological, it’s pastoral, he said.

“Communion is not a prize for the perfect,” but rather “a gift, the presence of Jesus in his Church and in the community. That is the theology,” he said.

“If we look at the history of the Church, we see that every time bishops have not managed a problem as pastors, they have taken sides on political life, on the political problem. In not handling a problem well, they took sides politically.”

Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, the incoming chair of the U.S. bishops’ pro-life committee and a consultant to the U.S. bishops’ doctrinal committee, which drafted the statement on the Eucharist, told Catholic News Service that he believes the document will be pastoral.

“I think it would be a beautiful thing if, in November, we were to close ranks and say, ‘We are pastors. We love our people. We want to make this an inviting Church and we want to gather people around the altar of the Lord,’” he told CNS in late October.

While teaching the truth and upholding the sacred dignity of all human life, “the Church is called to be the great sacrament of salvation and the great sacrament of unity. And if ever there were a time we needed to live up to that deeply theological description of what the Church is, it’s right now in our polarized culture,” Archbishop Lori said. “So we have to be careful of not allowing ourselves to go down ... partisan alleys where there is no life at the end of it, no evangelical life, no spiritual fruit.”

CNS PHOTO | VATICAN MEDIA U.S. President Joe Biden talks with Pope Francis during a meeting at the Vatican Oct. 29. uPope plans Dec. 2-6 visit to Cyprus and

Greece. Pope Francis’ planned trip to the eastern Mediterranean in December will focus on migration, Catholic-Orthodox relations and promoting peace in a region known more for its vacation spots than its ongoing political tensions. The pope had made a one-day visit to migrant and refugee camps on the Greek island of Lesbos in 2016, but this will be his first visit to the Greek mainland. uCourt rejects Catholic hospital’s appeal of transgender patient’s lawsuit. The Supreme

Court Nov. 1 turned down an appeal from a

Catholic hospital in California that was sued for refusing to perform a hysterectomy on a transgender patient. The court’s decision, issued without comment, sends the lawsuit back to state court and avoids examining whether the hospital can be sued for refusing to provide treatment it said would violate its religious beliefs. Justices Clarence Thomas,

Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch said the court should have taken the case. uPretrial hearing is held in McCarrick case; second hearing will be Dec. 21. The Dedham,

Massachusetts, District Court held a pretrial hearing Oct. 28 in the criminal sex abuse case of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who is facing three counts of sexually assaulting a teenager in the 1970s. McCarrick pleaded not guilty to the charges Sept. 3 at the court, but his presence at the hearing was waived. A second pretrial hearing was scheduled for Dec. 21. In

September, he was not taken into custody but was ordered to post $5,000 bail and have no contact with the alleged victim or children. — Catholic News Service

A forum series exploring critical needs in our community as well as hopeful solutions

THU. NOV. 18. 2021 | 6:00 – 8:30 PM in person at St. Catherine University OR via livestream

CATHOLIC MISSION SCHOOLS What role do Catholic mission schools play in creating a more equitable society?

MODERATOR Ricky Austin Vice President of Advancement and Operations, Aim Higher Foundation PANELISTS FROM University of St. Thomas Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis Catholic Schools: Drexel Mission Schools Initiative Cristo Rey Network Archdiocese of Denver Catholic Schools