Discussions at the Deanery

Friends

Peace be with you. 

Recently, the priests in the Cedar Rapids Deanery met to discuss issues affecting us all and I wanted to update you on three of our discussions. The first was an urgent plea from the Catherine McCauley Center for financial assistance. They work with immigrants who have been cleared by the US State Department to go through a five-year process that may end up in citizenship. Unfortunately, the spending freeze President Trump and DOGE has implemented means they no longer have the funds to support these people. They assured us that these are not people who have come here illegally but are people who have spent years in a refugee camp and have been chosen by our country to come here for a better life. I encourage you to support the Catherine McCauley Center in their commitment to these people. They told us the best way to do this is through their website cmc-cr.org. We will plan to take up a parish collection in the weeks ahead as well. 

We also talked about the Archdiocesan Council of Catholic Women (ACCW), which is the organizing body for women for women in this Archdiocese. It was all but extinct, due to Covid and a lack of mission. We are in need of some women to represent St. Patrick’s Parish to deanery gatherings and bring back information and organization. I would also hope our leaders would push the local and national organization to focus on evangelization efforts and ways Catholic women in this area can support each others with ideas of how they can raise practicing Catholic children and/or help non-practicing family members to come back. If you are interested in helping be a part of this and/or representing St. Patrick’s Church, please contact me or Isabelle Miller at St. Matthew’s Church. 

Lastly, and probably most controversially, we talked about the age of confirmation. I’m going to express my own unpopular opinion that I voiced at this meeting. I believe we should restore the original order of the sacraments of initiation, which means first baptism, then, somewhere around age seven or eight, confirmation, and, climatically, eucharist. This is the order we do it when we bring people into the church at Easter Vigil. It’s the order they do them in the Eastern Church. All that the church has asked is that, in ordinary circumstances, confirmation should be administered to a child that is of the “age of reason”, meaning approximately seven or eight years of age. Confirmation was not meant to be similar to a bar mitzvah, whereby a Jewish boy is recognized as a man. It’s also not meant to be graduation from practicing the faith, as it has become for many people. It’s a confirmation that the person was baptized and is living out their baptismal faith in the Spirit. However, I am one voice and, even though I believe I was among the majority of priests in this deanery, the rest of the priests of the Archdiocese may overrule me. Regardless, it will definitely be a process of implementation and conversation and will not start next year if we do make the change. Another suggestion that I appreciated was to allow parents to make the decision with their own kids’ best interest at heart. I feel like John Paul II would appreciate that. We’ll keep you updated as things progress. 

Know of my prayers for you. Please pray for me too.