Parish Leadership Day 2000 features evangelization theme

By Michelle Martin
Staff writer

When more than 1,300 people come to Mother Guerin High School in River Grove for Parish Leadership Day Feb. 26, most will be looking for new ideas for their parish pastoral councils.

Rita Kattner, whose office organizes the event, said she hopes they leave with more than they expected.

“We want them to leave with a wider sense of church,” said Kattner, who directs the Office for Parish Pastoral Councils.

This year’s Parish Leadership Day will feature a keynote address by Paulist Father Bruce Nieli, “The Catholic Millennium: Praising the Lord of the Jubilee, Reseeding the Fallow Field.”

Nieli is an evangelizer who travels across the United States. He also serves as a part-time associate pastor at St. Patrick Parish in Memphis, Tenn.

He plans to talk about how America is “spiritually hungry” and ready for the message of the “Culture of Life” preached by Pope John Paul II and, ideally, all Catholics.

“Catholicism has a unique opportunity at the dawn of the third millennium to call America to the eucharistic table and prepare America to be a holy people,” he said. “There is an opportunity for a Catholic Great Awakening, the challenge for Catholicism to become America’s spiritual leaven and to plant in the American soil the consistent ethic of life on common holy ground.”

But for that to happen, he said, Catholics must prepare the American culture to accept the seed of the word of God. To do so, they should look to the examples of Americans like Danny Thomas, who founded St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sister Thea Bowman, who used gospel and blues music to spread the Gospel.

Parish Leadership Day features nearly 100 workshop sessions, some offered in Polish and Spanish.

Topics range from archdiocesan policies to parenting programs to how to get young adults involved in parish life. Cardinal George will offer a workshop on inculturation, or the dialog between the Catholic faith and American culture.

As part of a special evangelization track of workshops, Nieli will offer “Proselytizing and Evangelizing: The Difference.” The day also will feature a special “Leadership Track” of workshops for people who plan to participate in the archdiocese’s five-session leadership training program starting in March. Those who attend all three leadership track workshops will not have to attend the first leadership program session, Kattner said.

Jim Boyd, who put together the leadership training program and will present most of the leadership track workshops, said it will blend much of what he has learned about leadership and management in the trust banking industry with the theological åbasis for leadership.

Father Ralph Starus, pastor of St. Malachy Parish, will offer part of the leadership track workshop at Parish Leadership Day, discussing the theological basis for leadership.

“One of the things he talks about is that Jesus was one the greatest examples of leadership and management,” Boyd said. “Look at the story of Simon Peter. It’s about getting people to believe in themselves and succeeding through other people.”

More than 35 people signed up in advance for the leadership track, Kattner said.

Parish Leadership Day also includes time for participants to eat lunch together and to gather with other parish leaders from their own vicariates to discuss the keynote address and to network with one another, Kattner said.

The day concludes with a Mass celebrated by Cardinal George.

Nearly 100 people from parishes throughout the city have come together to plan and present this year’s edition of Parish Leadership Day, Kattner said. That’s a high level of participation for a project that drew about 200 participants total when it began in the mid-1980s.

Parish Leadership Day runs from 7:15 a.m. to 5:15 p.m. Feb. 26 at Mother Theodore Guerin High School, 8001 W. Belmont Ave., River Grove. Cost is $40 per person, not including lunch or a $5 surcharge for walk-ins. Discounts are available for groups of four or more from one parish. For information, call (312) 751-8364.

BACK