{"id":5100,"date":"2006-01-26T17:04:02","date_gmt":"2006-01-26T17:04:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/true-weirdness-in-n-indiana.html"},"modified":"2006-01-26T17:04:02","modified_gmt":"2006-01-26T17:04:02","slug":"true-weirdness-in-n-indiana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/true-weirdness-in-n-indiana.html","title":{"rendered":"True Weirdness in N. Indiana"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not on this side. The other side.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

The pastor of St. Joseph Church hasn’t lived in his parish’s rectory since he arrived more than six months ago.<\/p>\n

When the Rev. Terry Steffens arrived at St. Joseph last July, he discovered severe damage within the rectory caused by more than 13 years of neglect and accumulated animal waste, according to a letter Steffens sent parishioners this fall. Since July, he has been living at St. Michael’s rectory in Schererville, awaiting renovations at St. Joseph. Those renovations should be complete by mid-March, Steffens said. <\/p>\n

In his letter to parishioners, Steffens described the items destroyed and needing replacement, including desks, chairs, cabinets, doors and linoleum flooring that had asbestos backing. The asbestos in the flooring means hazardous materials experts have to remove it. <\/p>\n

The letter said Bishop Dale Melczek had advised Steffens to have the rectory fumigated before he moved in. Steffens told the parish the fumigator hired to clean the rectory over a six-week period said he had become sick to his stomach from cleaning one of the rectory’s rooms that was heavily saturated with feces from dogs, rabbits, hamsters and guinea pigs. <\/p>\n

…A staff member at St. Joseph also did not want to speak about the rectory or its previous pastor, and Diocese of Gary spokesman the Rev. Brian Chadwick declined to comment specifically about St. Joseph. <\/p>\n

In his letter, Steffens wrote: "It is important to remember that the destruction of the … rectory could have been prevented if better judgment had been exercised." <\/p>\n

Calls seeking comment made to St. Joseph’s previous pastor, the Rev. Mark Pavlina, were not answered. Chadwick said the diocese has policies in place to handle possible personnel issues and, as far as he knew, Pavlina would not be facing any diocesan discipline. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not on this side. The other side. The pastor of St. Joseph Church hasn’t lived in his parish’s rectory since he arrived more than six months ago. When the Rev. Terry Steffens arrived at St. Joseph last July, he discovered severe damage within the rectory caused by more than 13 years of neglect and accumulated…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nTrue Weirdness in N. 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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\/5100","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=5100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}