Oct 03, 2019

Greetings,

This week a few things will be happening at Mass: Firstly, it is time for our annual State of the Parish Address. You will find in your bulletin general information about the parish over the past year. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Mr. Kevin Audin at the parish number. He would be more than happy to be of assistance. Secondly, after all of the Masses we will be having our ministry fair! And lastly, at the 4:30 Mass, Mr. Ian Kelly, our seminarian intern will be giving a short reflection as is required for his studies.

IN OTHER NEWS:

PARISH COUNCIL:  Three items came up at Parish Pastoral Council (PPC) that they thought you might want to know and that I should write in my column so here we go:

1. COLLECTION ENHANCEMENT PROGRAM:  PPC thought that you would like to know that this normally very expensive program is costing the parish nothing. Our bishop made this possible by allowing us to take the cost of the program out of the money normally sent to the diocese for our assessment. If we did not participate in the program, we would have simply paid the assessment; the bottom line being then, it is as if we received the program free of charge! Thank you to everybody who participated. Please know of my prayers.

2. ASSESSMENT:  Why do we pay an assessment? The diocesan offices do not generate an, income, for example, a parish does through a collection and so each parish contributes toward the running of the diocese. The parish benefits daily from these services. Some examples are the running of our seminaries where our intern Mr. Ian Kelly is going to school, administration of our schools and all of its diocesan services, campus ministries such as the Newman Center at the University of Akron, maintenance of the Diocesan Archives, the operation of the Tribunal that helps us with marriages and nullities (for which there is no longer a charge), the financial and legal offices (that helps with such things as opening the JB School), the Chancery that does such things as make sure that visiting priests from other dioceses are in good standing, and many other services. For a more complete list of how your diocesan assessment is used, search for “Diocese of Cleveland Assessment.”

3. WEEKLY COLLECTION:  The last item on the list was how to read the weekly collection report. At the end of the report you will notice a number that either looks like this: $53 or like this ($53). Without brackets it means we are ahead of where we would be comfortable for paying our bills and such. With brackets it means we are behind for what we budgeted. These numbers are tallied new each month. So if at the end of a month you see ($500) and the first of the next you see $450, it does not mean that we covered the loss with the collection. In this particular example, it means that we are still $50 in the hole!

ANOTHER ADDENDUM:  Transitional Deacon Joseph Robinson, who did his internship with us last year, came across another interesting historical tidbit that you might want to cut out and paste in the back of your parish history book. “While paging through an old book about the Seventh National  Eucharistic Congress held in Cleveland,” he wrote, “I came across Father Zwisler’ s name. Did you know that he deaconed one of the solemn high Masses while he was pastor of St. Sebastian?” This was before Vatican II and priests could serve as a deacon for solemn high Masses.

“The Mass was supposed to be held in the Public Auditorium but because of the amount of children expected, it was transferred to Municipal Stadium. The Pontifical High Mass was celebrated by His Excellency, the Most Reverend Francis Beckman, Archbishop of Dubuque and preached by His Eminence Patrick Cardinal Hayes, the Papal Legate.”

God bless,

Fr. Valencheck