Merry Christmas & Looking Ahead

Friends,

Peace be with you and MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I know that many of you will be reading this during the fourth Sunday of Advent but, because of how close the two celebrations are, I feel it’s appropriate to preempt the celebration of the birth of our Lord by a few hours. I hope Christmas is a time for joyfully being around family and friends for you all and finding time to rest. In this vein, I gave the parish staff the week between Christmas and New Years off so they could spend time with their family and friends. I will be checking my voicemail daily that week but I also plan to do “ride alongs” with the police and firefighters so I may not get your message right away. There is an emergency number listed on my voicemail if someone has died or is in need of an anointing. We all deserve a rest sometimes and I hope this week provides that for you.

In the past six months, several of our deceased parishioners’ wills have been settled and we have, as a result, received some very kind gifts from them. This, in turn, allowed us to get to a point where we were in a comfortable enough financial situation to completely pay off the debt we had with the Archdiocese of Dubuque for the repairs we undertook in the wake of the 2008 flood. We are now debt free, which is a position of real strength for this parish! We do have some major expenses coming up, which will probably require some kind of capital campaign. These include putting a new roof on the parish center, building some type of storage facility to replace the collapsing shed on the Northeast corner of the parking lot, and repairs to the ceiling tiles and flooring in the church. Actually, we are in discussion with a church renovation company to repair some damage to the walls that happened when the church roof was bad, spray the church ceiling with acoustical paint, redo the flooring, and possibly add some images of the 12 apostles on the ceiling above the windows with images of St. Gregory and St. Cecilia on the back wall of church. We’d want to talk with parishioners before we’d make that drastic of a change to the parish because it would also likely mean being out of church for several months while the repairs are being done. The good thing is that, aside from the roof of the parish center, none of these repairs are absolutely necessary so we have time to make up our mind as to what and whether we want to make.

In the wake of the loss of Bingo, I’ve been thinking about a weekly fundraiser that would be more in line with our parish vision. Our Parish vision states “God unveils the sacred through sacraments; we, as Catholics in the heart of our community, cooperate by shepherding seekers to Him”. One idea that has surfaced is the possibility of opening a childcare center on the empty lot on the corner of Fifth street and A Avenue. Cedar Rapids is in need of affordable childcare and this could be a good use of that space. However, there have been several other ideas for the use of that space including transitional housing to help homeless people find a decent job as well as transitional housing for women who are pregnant and contemplating abortion. I have also considered the possibility of creating a set of apartments where retired priests could come and live with relatively cheap rent in order to substitute for priests in Cedar Rapids. We were approached by a member of the city council who encouraged us to play a role in the development of this area of town and I tend to agree with that person. If we don’t want to see more tattoo parlors and tire repair places that seem to only be open at night, we need to be proactive in shaping what happens to the property in this neighborhood. If you are interested in helping with any of this, please contact me.