Dear Parishioners,

Thank you everyone for another successful Vacation Bible School for 2025! It’s nice to have everything up and going again, especially since last year at this time we were in full recovery mode from our tornado. Our volunteers and all our families that participated are greatly appreciated! Our staff did a great job once again!

A few of you may have noticed that the ushers are counting attendance these past few weeks during the month of July. There is a reason for this (especially post covid) as we enter into what are going to be the best plans for our priests and our parishes in the coming years. As I have written in my columns the past few weeks, we were blessed to have one ordination this summer. Yet, as the math shows, when three priests are called back to the order and/or their diocese, the math doesn’t add up. That’s why some of us are starting to help out at other parishes until some solutions present themselves. Bishop Lohse has been thinking and praying about this for both our diocese and as he also serves as the diocesan administrator for the Diocese of Steubenville. It is not just something unique to our area of our country. No decisions have been made about anything, but it gives us all something to think and pray about. All these things are just in their preliminary stages.

As I look around, I know that as I study the dioceses that my seminary classmates serve in, all of them have done a pastoral plan reorganization. Locally, our neighbor to the North (the Diocese of Grand Rapids) just announced their new pastoral plan a few weeks ago. In our own diocese, almost ten years ago, we did the collaborative reorganization. But we had more priests to fill those spots ten years ago (and somehow, I was ten years younger then!). It’s going to take a lot of thinking and praying and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to help us with this. In this Jubilee Year that we are reminded that we are Pilgrims of Hope, we need to keep looking towards the future and what our Lord intends for the Church.

Thanks for reading! 

 Fr. Mark