{"id":3740,"date":"2006-12-31T08:54:18","date_gmt":"2006-12-31T08:54:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/a-pleasant-surprise.html"},"modified":"2006-12-31T08:54:18","modified_gmt":"2006-12-31T08:54:18","slug":"a-pleasant-surprise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/a-pleasant-surprise.html","title":{"rendered":"A pleasant surprise"},"content":{"rendered":"

2007 is the Sequicentenniel of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend<\/a> – the commemorations begin at a Cathedral Mass today<\/a>, but last night at Mass we prayed a special prayer for the Jubilee  – from a prayer card that will be sent to all homes next week, etc. <\/p>\n

And do you know what?<\/p>\n

It was a Psalm. Psalm 117, as I recall. <\/p>\n

Why is that a pleasant surprise? Because it wasn’t some list of platitudes pulled together by a diocesan committee thanking God for our diversity and our gifts and talents in this diverse, gifted and talented world …it was a Psalm! <\/em><\/p>\n

In other news, the parish was gorgeously decorated – here’s a photo from the parish website from a past year’s decorating. It doesn’t really capture the – I don’t know – warmth – that the scheme produces. <\/a>Gothic and warm? Sure! <\/p>\n

Music was Christmas carols, homily was on St. Joseph – a historical rundown of the history of devotion to St. Joseph and three qualities which we can discern from the life and witness of St. Joseph.<\/p>\n

And was it over in five minutes? I think so. Six, tops.<\/p>\n

In gratitude, Michael the Toddler was pretty good during Mass, until we got to, you know…The Lights. The bulbs which outline various arches and other features in the altars, and which are switched on as Communion begins. Stupidly, I was trying to keep Michael interested by whispering to him about the lights, and the excitement infected him to the point where he started yelling, "Come on, lights! Come on, lights!"<\/p>\n

Back of the church for the rest of Mass for us.<\/p>\n

What about you? Gashwin is still in India, and reflects on the Feast of the Holy Family there.<\/a><\/p>\n

BTW, here’s a good article from today’s paper about the Jubilee:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Joseph White, a church historian at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, says the anniversary is significant in a diocese that it has traditionally wielded influence beyond its size. White is writing a history of the diocese for the celebration.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has two outstanding institutions in it, the University of Notre Dame in South Bend and (the national Catholic weekly newspaper) Our Sunday Visitor in Huntington, which are so influential in terms of Catholicism nationwide,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

snip<\/em><\/p>\n

Catholic clergy rarely visited the area from 1800 to 1830. When they did, they were beset by \u201cdetestable\u201d roads as one early priest put it, pigeons cooked with their feathers still on presented to them as food by their American Indian hosts and often indifferent potential parishioners who traveled too quickly, following canal-building work, to build churches.<\/p>\n

The appointment of priests was problematic for years because the area\u2019s Catholics spoke three languages \u2013 French, German and English \u2013 and priests needed to speak at least two languages to be useful. The first two priests sent specifically to Fort Wayne each quit within a year. The third was needed to rescue a congregation in Logansport, and the fourth was often absent and later let go for apparent alcoholism.<\/p>\n

But by 1857, when the Rev. John Henry Luers \u2013 German-born and serving in Cincinnati, was named the diocese\u2019s first bishop \u2013 Fort Wayne had two churches under way: St. Augustine\u2019s, which is the present cathedral, and St. Mary\u2019s, which catered to German Catholics.<\/p>\n

The latter burned in 1993 and was rebuilt soon after.<\/p>\n

And, the Rev. Julien Benoit had been working to set up schools, including one for girls staffed by Sisters of Providence from the Terre Haute congregation headed by Mother Theodore Guerin.<\/p>\n

Guerin was canonized a saint in October.<\/p>\n

Still, Luers had little good to say about Fort Wayne. He complained bitterly to superiors that Indianapolis would be a far better place from which to lead, and he even proposed moving the headquarters to Lafayette. He longed to be named bishop of Toledo instead of staying in \u201cthis wild Hoosierdom\u201d where \u201cmost of the congregations are small and poor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFort Wayne is rather a poor place for a Bishop to accomplish much,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2007 is the Sequicentenniel of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend – the commemorations begin at a Cathedral Mass today, but last night at Mass we prayed a special prayer for the Jubilee  – from a prayer card that will be sent to all homes next week, etc. And do you know what? 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3740\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}