Charlie Dittmeier's Home Page
On Saturday morning I met a donor who has been very generous in supporting the Deaf Development Programme. We met at this coffee shop near the retirement home where I will be living. The bicycle is my cousin’s electric bike that I am riding while in Louisville.
On Sunday morning I bicycled over to St. Margaret Mary Church where two of my priest friends are ministering.
Like many modern parishes, they had two technicians in the back to control the projection and the sound system.
On the morning of our last day together, Brian Reynolds, the vicar general of the archdiocese, spoke to us about the research and planning for a reorganization of the parishes of the diocese.
Some photos from the beautiful St. Meinrad campus
The distinctive twin spires of St. Meinrad Archabbey dominate the countryside and can be seen across the fields and forests of Spencer County, Indiana.
At the liturgy this morning, I proclaimed the first scripture reading.
A special part of this liturgy was the offering of the sacrament of the sick to any of the priests who felt the need for it. Archbishop Shelton Fabre anointed them with the holy oil blessed in Holy Week.
St. Meinrad Archabbey is an old and traditional Benedictine abbey but it is also home to new technology, with a solar power field on the abbey grounds.
For two of the four days we were at St. Meinrad, Sr. Jane Becker presented about the dynamics of a reorganization of a diocese. She had two lectures on each of the two days.
Each day we had a liturgy in the St. Thomas Aquinas chapel.
St. Meinrad Seminary is an old institution in rural southern Indiana, an establishment of Benedictine monks who came from Germany. This is a view from my third-floor window.
This is my room at the seminary, in Anselm Hall. The wide angle makes it look much bigger than it is!
Every year the priests of the Archdiocese of Louisville gather for an assembly, at St. Meinrad Seminary in southern Indiana. This year I was able to join them for the four-day event.
The priests always say the best part of the assemblies is getting together with friends and colleagues.
After a brief opening session, the group walked through an interior courtyard on the way to their first dinner together.
The meals were fantastic, both for the food and for the conversations.
After an evening prayer, the group returned to the dining room for an address by Archbishop Shelton Fabre who spoke of his hopes for this time together.
St. Frances of Rome church is across the street from Nazareth Home Clifton and I went to the 8:30 AM mass. Fr. Jerry Eifler, an old friend, was the presider there. After mass I also met some family of a girl I taught at Angela Merici High School in the 1970s.
This the driveway to Nazareth Home Clifton on Payne Street in Louisville. I will live in the building on the right.
One of the things I like about Kentucky and that I miss in Cambodia are the large hardwood trees and forests. This majestic tree is on the grounds of Nazareth Home.
On Saturday, May 30, Cole McDowell was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Louisville and all the priests gathered for the celebration
I appreciated the timing of the ordination because it gave me an opportunity to reunite with priests I went to the seminary with 60 years ago and to meet the new priests ordained after I started working in Asia.
St. Thomas Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky was in operation for eighteen years. I was there for the middle six-year span. Many of us who went through St. Thomas keep in touch via a Google group called “LostBoysofSTS.” Most of our contact is online but occasionally we meet for lunch. We got together last Friday and it was a great gathering.
This photo caught everyone to my right looking rather sombre but it was really a good time!
There is a 10:00 AM mass in the upstairs chapel at Nazareth Home Clifton every day except Saturday and I went today to see how they do things here because I suspect I will be the presider some times in the future. Today Fr. Roy Stiles was presider and had an anointing for the Sacrament of the Sick for Fr. Joe Batcheldor who will have a heart procedure tomorrow.
I actually left Phnom Penh on Wednesday. We boarded the plane Tuesday night but didn’t take off until after midnight. We flew six hours to the Inchon airport in Seoul.
Modern airports such as Inchon/Seoul are like theme parks and malls with runways. Architects vie with each other to include live trees and plants, playgrounds, food courts, museums, even a waterfall. The photo above is Inchon.
Inchon airport was really foggy when we landed. Even the buildings just across the tarmac were almost invisible.
From Seoul we flew 14 hours to Detroit, Michigan (above) where we had to reclaim our luggage and pass through passport control because it was our port of entry into the United States. More and more of the passport control functions are being handled electronically with scans and face photos. When I landed in Minneapolis the TSA agent never touched my passport.
From Detroit it was a 47-minute flight to Louisville where David and Emily picked me up and took me to Nazareth Home Clifton where I am staying.