Six priests celebrate significant anniversaries
FREELAND — On Monday, June 18, six diocesan priests were recognized for their years of ministry throughout the Diocese of Saginaw.
Celebrating significant anniversaries were Frs. Joseph Friske and Julius Spleet, who were ordained 50 years ago; Frs. Ron Dombrowski, James Falsey and Jack Johnson, who were ordained 40 years; and Fr. Bill Rutkowski who was ordained 25 years ago.
Diocesan youth learn skills and about serving others through YES program
By Mark Haney
The Catholic Weekly
SAGINAW —For one hot, humid week of June, teens from around the Diocese of Saginaw sweated so others might have a better daily life.
The Youth Encounter Service program brought teens to the city to work Monday through Friday, June 18-22, on the Mission Sisters of the Holy Spirit home, Missiondell, and to work on houses on Mackinaw and Hess streets.
Along the way, the young people learned about the needy and about themselves. They also learned some practical training in such things as how to install a toilet, lay flooring, paint a room, finish a wooden door, paint the exterior of a house, install insulation, remove unwanted carpeting, build a porch and install an exterior door.
GRAND RAPIDS — Eleven Grand Rapids West Catholic High School students and seven other young men ages 14-22 from across the Grand Rapids Diocese traveled the weekend of May 4-6 to St. Paul, Minn., to visit St. John Vianney College Seminar.
The trip was sponsored by the Office of Priestly Vocations of the Diocese of Grand Rapids and West Catholic High School.
The trip was organized by Fr. Ron Hutchinson, director of Priestly Vocations, along with West Catholic religion teacher Patrick Nugent and campus minister Phil Dolci.
National awareness and social action campaign visits Grand Rapids lawmaker
By Mark Haney
The Catholic Weekly
GRAND RAPIDS — From Monday, June 18, through Monday, July 2, a small cadre of sisters from Network, the nation Catholic social justice lobby, traveled the midsection of the U.S. on a mission.
Not an “Elmer Gantry”-style mission. More like a “Blues Brothers” mission from God.
The 15-day tour, which took the nuns — 14 of them ride the bus in a rotation — from Ames, Iowa to Washington, D.C., was tailored to let them visit Catholic-sponsored social service agencies and to speak to federal lawmakers in their home district offices in order to convince the lawmakers not to support the budget of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). Starting in 2014, the budget would cut funding for education, social services and public health by 19 percent below current spending. It would eliminate $5.3 trillion in spending over the next 10 years.
By Michael LeGault
The Catholic Times
JACKSON — On a journey to the corridors of power in Washington, D.C., a group of nuns rolled into Jackson on Saturday, June 23, hoping to build grassroots support for a protest against federal budget cutbacks in social services for the poor.
Nuns on the Bus, as the protest-on-wheels is called, arrived in Jackson after stops at cities in Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois. The group’s swing through Michigan included stops in Grand Rapids and Detroit.
By Mark Haney
The Catholic Times
ANN ARBOR — In their search for meaning and direction, teens often turn to music, to sports, to drugs, to peers.
James Mangan turned to God.
He never turned back, either, and was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Lansing at an ordination rite on Saturday, June 23, at St. Mary Cathedral in Lansing.
But his route to the priesthood has its roots in his high school years, when the second youngest of the six children of Rick and Sue Mangan was a student at Fr. Gabriel Richard High School.
Bishop Boyea ordains one priest, two transitional deacons in Mass at St. Mary Cathedral
By Mark Haney
The Catholic Times
LANSING — Priests and deacons should not just celebrate the sacraments. They should be the sacraments.
That was the message Bishop Earl Boyea gave on Saturday, June 23, when he ordained James Mangan (son of James and Susan Mangan) a priest and Paul Erickson (son of Brian and Arlene Erickson) and John Whitlock (son of Dennis and Mary Whitlock) transitional deacons at a Mass at St. Mary Cathedral. While the new priest will be serving St. Patrick Parish in Brighton as a parochial vicar (assistant pastor), the other two will be finishing their studies at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit. They should become priests next June.
KALAMAZOO — St. Augustine School has earned recognition as a School of Distinction by the Michigan Non-Public School Accrediting Association (MNSAA). The elementary school becomes only the 11th of 242 MNSAA accredited schools to earn this recognition since its inception in 2007.
To earn “School of Distinction” recognition accredited schools must choose two to three substantial goals and document specific progress. St. Augustine’s staff chose to focus on the following two goals: increase knowledge and integration of the seven principles of Catholic social teaching and increase grade-level language scores on the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. The school began its process in 2010 and presented its documentation to MNSAA in April.
SAGINAW — The parish cohorts made recommendations for changes, as sought by the “Planning Tomorrow’s Parishes” process, and those reports were filed with the diocesan planning commission, which reviewed the recommendations and either approved or came up with recommendations of its own.
This is what the commission recommended for each cohort:
SAGINAW — While months away from a final decision, the historic undertaking, “Planning Tomorrow’s Parishes” has reached the mid-way point.
Preliminary recommendations from the diocesan planning commission — a 19-member body comprised of priests, religious sisters and lay men and women — were completed and released to pastoral leadership on Thursday, June 14, and to parish core teams on Friday, June 15. Pastors and pastoral administrators were encouraged to share the recommendations with their parishioners over the weekend.