Category: Maryknoll

Happenings in the Maryknoll world, especially in the Cambodia Mission Team.

Maryknoll Transition #3

I am starting to get feedback from people about various misunderstandings about the changes coming up in my ministry in Cambodia. Let me be clear about a few things that I will explain more fully in the days to come:

  • My old contract with the Maryknoll priests group (the Maryknoll Society) is to end on 30 June 2022.
  • My new contract with the Maryknoll Lay Missioners is to start on 1 July 2022.
  • I am not retiring at this point.
  • I am not stopping my work in Cambodia with the Deaf Development Programme or with the English Catholic Community. That will continue.
  • I am not leaving Cambodia at this point. I plan to continue working in Cambodia at least through December, 2023.
  • I am not leaving the priesthood.
  • The Maryknoll Society has disabled my cdittmeier@maryknoll.org e-mail account. Please do not send anything to that address but use cdittmeier@gmail.com from now on.
  • Please do not send any money to me for the deaf work though Maryknoll, NY. It will not reach me.

In the most simple terms, nothing will change except that I am replacing a Maryknoll Society contract with a contract from the Maryknoll Lay Missioners. And my e-mail address will change to cdittmeier@gmail.com.

Maryknoll Transition

Greetings… I have a big Maryknoll transition coming up at the end of June. The Maryknoll Society (priests and brothers) are no longer going to renew my contract—they say I’m too old–and I am going to move my contract to the Maryknoll Lay Missioners. I want to explain more about that in upcoming posts but I need first to make two requests:

1. My present e-mail address–cdittmeier@maryknoll.org—will no longer be valid after 30 June 2022. Instead my main address will become cdittmeier@gmail.com. Please go ahead and change my address NOW in your e-mail lists so that we can keep in touch.

2. Many people have supported the deaf ministry over the last 35 years by sending donations to my Mission Account administered by the Maryknoll Society. Like my e-mail address, my Mission Account will cease functioning at the end of June so please do not send any further donations to my Mission Account at Maryknoll, NY. Again, more about that to come.

I had planned to initiate this transition process at the beginning of May but that planning was BEFORE I had kidney surgery, BEFORE I got Covid, and BEFORE the Maryknoll Society e-mail server started acting up after a security upgrade, choking off my e-mail communications.

I’ll be back with more about what’s happening….

Renaissance Man

I posted some photos from the Maryknoll house in Bangkok while I stayed there for almost two weeks. Brother John Beeching was one of the pillars of the Maryknoll Thailand community throughout the years, until his recent retirement to Maryknoll, New York. His influence is shown in many ways, but especially in his sense of the artistic and his ability to apply it practically in a setting. He has an affinity for Chinese style and that is shown throughout the Bangkok house.

The room where the Chinese motif is most present is in the dining room where there huge plaques on one wall, a variety of vases on another, and even Chinese-style table decorations.

Throughout the house, though, John’s touch is present. Below, on the left figures adorn the floor and wall. On the right, another vase and a figure are on a hutch.

Hospital Day 23

Given my choice, I would prefer not to spend a week or ten days in Covid isolation, but if I have to do it, the Maryknoll house in Bangkok hasn’t been so bad. I’ve spent much of my time alone on the third floor so others can use the house and not worry about my infecting them, but for days at a time I have been alone and able to make use of the rest of the house.

Here are some scenes from the ground floor of the office.

Standing just inside the front door of the office, this view looks toward the rear of the house. The rear desk is that of the office manager. On the left is a desk for Fr. John Barth and at right front is the desk for Serge, one of the volunteers working with Maryknoll in Thailand.
Going through the partially opened sliding glass door in the first photo, one enters a corridor area, with the office behind and the dining room and kitchen through the door at the rear, by the large Chinese painting on the wall.

Hospital Day 14

I was discharged from BNH Hospital on Thursday and have been up and about since then. I have been surprisingly free of pain. Today I went to mass at the Bangkok cathedral with Fr. John Barth and then we had lunch with some Filipinas here working with Maryknoll.

The Cathedral of the Assumption is a large downtown church that is invisible from the streets. It fronts onto a courtyard and is surrounded by the cardinal’s residence and church schools and offices.
The 100+ year old church is reflective of the French influence of the century before last. It is quite beautiful and very well preserved.
The black structure jutting from the wall is the pulpit from which the priests used to preach in the days before microphone systems. (I’ve always had a secret desire to try one some day.)
Fr. John Barth and Charlie at a dim sum restaurant after mass. With us is Arlene Sale (white top) who has been a lay missioner with Maryknoll for many years, working with refugees. Two of her neighbors joined us.

Hospital Day 4

This is the cardiology department of BNH Hospital where I have been having my physical exam after two years of waiting. My doctor found a nodule on my kidney and wants to remove it so I am scheduled for surgery Saturday morning, but first I had to be checked out by a cardiologist. He noted that my heart rate was 43 beats per minute when I had an EKG on Monday and he made a note to the surgeon to have an external pacemaker ready in case my heart slowed down even more during surgery! An odd twist! I never heard of anything like that before. As you can see BNH Hospital is quite nice, part of the medical tourism package that Thailand offers to people especially throughout Southeast Asia.

New Director of Missions

Maryknoll Lay Missioners this month got a new Director of Mission, Ms. Elvira Ramirez (top left). Because she is responsible for all the lay missioners in the field, she is beginning her tenure by meeting everyone online and then she will start visiting the actual mission sites. Today she had a Zoom call with missioners in Cambodia and Haiti.

Bill Burns Funeral

Our friend and lay missioner Bill Burns died here in Cambodia and his funeral was held 24 March 2022. Because of new environmental regulations, most cremations are prohibited within the city boundaries and even the ones on the edge of the city can only be held at night when the ashes in the air are supposed to be less of a problem. Bill’s funeral was held at the Church of the Child Jesus in the morning but the cremation was delayed until 6:30 PM in the evening at a Buddhist wat.

In the morning, after the funeral mass, Bill’s body was taken to Wat Dombok Khpuos to await the cremation in the evening.
Bill had taught English to some of the monks, and monks from that pagoda were familiar with many Maryknollers over the past two decades and so there was a Buddhist ceremony at the wat with about ten monks chanting their ritual prayers. The coffin is on a catafalque at the top of the stairs.
After the prayers the coffin was lowered into the pyre structure into a crematorium where it was burned out of sight. A symbolic coffin replaced it at the top of the funeral pyre. The smoke from the cremation can be seen coming from the white chimney pipe at the top of the structure.