Dynamic Parish Missions

The team of Deacon Eddie Ensley and Deacon Robert Herrmann presented our annual parish mission Sunday through Tuesday.

Deacon Ensley pitched the mission at the Sunday Mass I attended. He started out praising the parish effusively, which is redundant after all the praise parish leadership heaps on St. Al's [stats D16 15th/15 27% +0.8].

He was from Georgia originally, and not then a Catholic. One of his uncles told him things like Catholics worship statues. He later went to Mississippi to study to become a Presbyterian minister. One day, out of curiosity, he went into a little Catholic church. To his surprise, it wasn't much different than the churches he was used to, except for the tabernacle with the reserved Eucharist. It was that experience, and years of thinking on it, and looking further into Catholic belief, that lead him to become a Catholic.

He delivered this homily in our church, which does not have the tabernacle. I argued for moving the tabernacle to the main church in the 2002 building project, rather than keeping it in a "weekday chapel", but the architect from Plunkett Raysich countered that "we're not going back". In this case, he was against going back to the future, see GIRM 314-315. His position prevailed at the parish, which might explain why, rather than hearing reports of experiences like Deacon Ensley's, I instead heard my Sunday School students ask why our church looks like an auditorium.