Monday, June 3
Registration began in later afternoon at St. Meinrad so that everyone was assembled by supper time. This year 125 priests signed up for the assembly, the largest gathering we have ever had. Archbishop Kelly set the tone for the time together in the evening prayer after supper as he replaced the scheduled speaker to give his own special message of welcome, encouragement, and challenge. He is a wonderful spiritual leader and we are most blessed to have him as our bishop in this difficult time. He was followed by two short talks by Frs. Steve Pohl and Bill Medley who took a still serious but lighter and more humorous approach as they set the context for the work together of the next few days.Prayer together is always a very important part of the assembly and Judy Bullock and Barry Mudd from the Louisville Office of Worship stayed throughout the assembly to organize and coordinate the beautiful prayer experiences in addition to providing musical accompaniment. Here Fr. Jerry Bell reads from scripture.
After evening prayer, Fr. Richard Fragomeni, from the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, gave the first of his presentations on the theological virtue of hope which he established as grounded in love that inspires faith.
Tuesday, June 4
Fr. Fragomeni continued his presentations in the morning and later afternoon, devoting time today more to the theological virtues of hope and love which he established last night as the basis for hope. He is an animated speaker who kept the group involved while providing good theological input very relevant to the situation of the church in Louisville today.
An addition to the assembly schedule was a presentation by Mr. Brian Reynolds, the Chief Operating Officer of the Archdiocese of Louisville. He and Archbishop Kelly brought all the priests up to date on the sex abuse situation. It is a very complex problem, but they both emphasized the need for real pastoral care of the victims as the first priority. At the same time, they pointed out the various other aspects of the problem which require careful pastoral attention. But both offered that the local church would be purified and become stronger because of having faced and dealt honestly with this most hurtful and disturbing problem.
Wednesday, June 5
John Roberto, from the Center for Ministry Development, continued the presentations he began last night on Community Based Faith Formation. He first outlined how there are different generations of Catholics in the church now, and how for the first time we are recognizing that they really believe and practice their faith in different ways because they really live in different worlds. It was a very interesting premise as he described the work he does to develop intergenerational faith development. The concept seems very valid and a practical way to help develop faith and understanding within a parish community. It was obvious from the questions and comments that he had a receptive audience in the pastors seated before him. I learned a lot of good ideas that I would like to try out in Cambodia. I believe what made his presentation so attractive to us is that his concepts and descriptions matched the experience that all of us have had as priests in parishes.
Judy Bullock is the director of the Office of Worship for the Archdiocese of Louisville, probably one of the few women in such a position in a major archdiocese. Today she explained the new guidelines for reception of the eucharist that were approved by Rome in March of this year. The new document requires some changes in the practice surrounding the reception of communion, such as a bow of head as a sign of respect before receiving.
The food is always great at St. Meinrad. No one ever need go hungry when attending one of these assemblies. On the last night the staff prepare a special dinner, and this time was no exception. After the meal several priests received plaques as marks of appreciation of their ministry by their peers. Archbishop Kelly also received a special gift as a special sign of hope for us in this troubled time for the diocese.
This year, for the first time, the major seminarians, those above college level, were invited to a day of the assembly. This is becoming more important because more and more of the seminarians have not grown up in Louisville and know few of the priests here. And they will have little opportunity to meet them after ordination because the pattern now is that young priests become pastors just two or three years after they are ordained.
June 6
Every day of the assembly we had morning prayer and evening prayer arranged by Judy Bullock and Barry Mudd from the Office of Worship. They put many hours into the preparations of the services, putting together the worship booklet, and then they were the musicians who accompanied all the music. An excellent job!
The only presentation this morning was the annual talk by Archbishop Kelly on the state of the archdiocese. He covered many topics, as usual, but the most time was spent discussing the sexual abuse cases that have been filed. He stated that the diocese must be and must be perceived as a safe place for children. Looking ahead to the meeting of the US bishops in Dallas next week, he said that the solution is going to require a lot of thought, more than 250 bishops could put together in a three days. Personally the archbishop said that he would be cautious about any automatic penalties and would prefer "total resignation" on the part of guilty individuals with subsequent supervision by the bishops. The Archdiocese of Louisville is truly blessed to have such a caring and intelligent and compassionate man as Archbishop Kelly.
After the archbishop's report, we had the concluding liturgy with the archbishop as celebrant and Jeff Nicolas as the homilist. Jeff did a really good job, acknowledging his anger at the men who had brought so much hurt to their victims and so much shame to their church. But he also named three of the abusers as priests who had been so kind to him when he was in the hospital and in his time of formation. He pointed out the conflict that so many of the priests feel: a sense of betrayal and feelings of anger, while at the same time recognizing that the abusers have done many good things and have been dear friends over the years. Then it was time for lunch and we all got on the road back to Louisville.