May 10, 2018 • Newspaper of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis
Restorative justice Parishes consider healing circles as a way to reach out to victims/ survivors of clergy sex abuse. — Page 6
Congrats, grads u Catholic high school leaders share their best life advice with graduating seniors. uBaccalaureate Masses and commencement ceremonies. — Page 9 uStudents gain hands-on experience, global perspective during gap year. — Pages 10-11 u Three high school seniors share how Catholic education has helped shape them. — Page 12
ROBERT CUNNINGHAM | FOR THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT
From left, Father Erich Rutten, parochial administrator of St. Peter Claver in St. Paul; Everlyn Wentzlaff, Lynette Graham, Cynthia Bailey Manns and Hazel Waterman visit before a meeting of the Black Catholic Leadership Initiative at St. Raphael in Crystal May 5. Father Rutten serves as a liaison with the group.
Art-A-Whirl Northeast Minneapolis parishes see opportunity in area’s annual art festival. — Page 14
Mother’s Day Columnist Laura Fanucci proposes ways parishes can better honor mothers. — Page 18
A voice at the table Black Catholic Leadership Initiative aims to broaden roles, presence across archdiocese By Jessica Trygstad The Catholic Spirit
L
ynette Graham, 61, is a lifelong Catholic, but she admits that she hasn’t always understood the Eucharist’s meaning and significance. But responding to a prompt of what gives her joy as a black Catholic, she said, “What I can say gives me joy now is the Eucharist.” Graham, a parishioner of St. Peter Claver in St. Paul, was among about 20 people who met at St. Raphael in Crystal May 5 to share their joys and struggles as black Catholics. She recalled growing up in Los Angeles attending Catholic school — not the Catholic school in her neighborhood, which was for white students, but a Catholic school farther away for black students that required her to take a bus with public school students. With her uniform making her a target for harassment, she and others from her school sat behind the bus driver. She said a lot of lifelong Catholics take their faith for granted because it’s all they’ve ever known, but without really knowing it. In the absence of that knowledge about her faith, Graham left
the Church for a while. But now, “I will never leave, and I defend it everywhere I go,” she told the group. Other attendees also reminisced about their Catholic school days and nuns who taught them — some in Jamaica — while others shared about missing the Latin Mass and how praying the rosary gives them peace. One woman spoke about admiring the faith from afar when she lived a few blocks away from a Catholic church in a small South Carolina town. She described converting to Catholicism upon marriage as a “childhood wish come true.” Each person’s story pointed to how experiences of being black enrich his or her Catholicity, an important common thread given the group’s objectives — to bring forth multicultural expressions of Catholicism and increase black leadership throughout the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. On the heels of last summer’s National Black Catholic Congress in Orlando, Florida, local participants organized the Black Catholic Leadership Initiative to put the congress’ themes into play with three focuses: prayer, youths and justice. The meeting at St. Raphael provided an update of the group’s ongoing work as well as a spiritual retreat, which was led by Cynthia Bailey Manns, a parishioner and the adult learning director at St. Joan of Arc in Minneapolis. “[The Black Catholic Leadership Initiative] is a very broad brush intentionally because prayer encompasses
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To us, this is just another layer of the tapestry, if you will, of who this archdiocese is, and to celebrate it is to learn and to deepen our faith as Catholics. Carole Burton so much. Justice isn’t just about social justice; it’s about justice overall. So, it’s a macro perspective,” said Carole Burton, 50, a parishioner of the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis and one of the group’s organizers. “So, how do we engage people? How do we engage conversation? How do we act and walk in that within our faith? That’s why the three [focuses], and that’s what came out of that work.” Organized as an “initiative,” the goal is for everyone to provide input “because everyone’s experience is different,” said Burton, who is completing a graduate leadership program at Augsburg College in Minneapolis. Immediately following the “Convocation of Catholic Leaders: The Joy of the Gospel in America” in Orlando July 1-4, the National Black Catholic Congress met in the same place to celebrate and affirm PLEASE TURN TO BLACK CATHOLICS ON PAGE 5