If a parish is a family, and a family is a domestic church, then nothing is more important that helping parishes make families of all kinds feel welcome and have their needs met, according to Michele Piotrowski, a family advocate at St. Catherine of Siena-St. Lucy Parish in Oak Park. Piotrowski, whose own mother died when she was a young child and who went through many difficult times herself, said churches must learn to value families in all their messiness, for it is in loving our families that we learn to love God.

Williams, married and the mother of two grown children, is one of more than 100 family advocates who receive resources from and work with the archdiocese’s Family Ministries Office.

The Catholic New World: How long have you been a family advocate?

Michele Piotrowski: For about 18 years.

TCNW: All at St. Catherine-St. Lucy?

MP: Formally commissioned at St. Catherine-St. Lucy. I have on my parish shirt here, and it says “A place for all people.” I think this really captures the feeling of being a family in our parish, and what our parish would like to share with everyone. We’re trying to get there. I don’t think we’d hold ourselves up as a paragon.

I do partner with the Council of Catholic Women at St. Giles in Oak Park, and they are working things out to secure the cooperation of other ministries in the parish so we can do some special projects in Lawndale, where I am working many hours during the week on a “Letters to Santa” project, and on a project to collect school supplies, and on a project to collect mittens, gloves, scarves and hats.

I like to do projects because there’s a beginning a middle and an end, and you feel like you accomplished something together.

TCNW: What do family advocates do?

MP: When I started out almost 20 years ago, we went through some pretty formalized training. What I remember most of all is that we are to be a presence that reminds all ministries within a parish to take the perspective of the family into account when any decisions are made affecting, say, when we meet, the type of ministries that we have, the type of programs that we have, if it’s going to fit with the needs of families. But “family” is broadly defined. We have children in single-parent families, parents who have adopted children, we have teen families, we have grandparents raising grandchildren, we have single people who are still part of families, we have empty-nesters who have raised their children, we have older people who have never had children, so it’s really a very broad spectrum.

Every person belongs to a family, and we try to be present to them. Another way of saying it would be a “ministry of listening,” listening to their needs and informally and formally and securing the cooperation of the pastor and the parish pastoral council to find out what the needs of families are. This is November, which Cardinal George has dedicated to be Family Life Month. It’s also Illinois Family Awareness Month, and we are remembering members of our families who have gone before us. In many of our churches we will have photographs of our loved ones who are no longer with us in our homes but are certainly with us in our spirits.

TCNW: How do you make different kinds of families feel welcome?

MP: Every family has its strengths. That would be an important attitude and spirit to carry into being present. Whatever has happened within a family should be listened to, respected and learned from. We shouldn’t close ourselves off to people who may be having different experiences from the mainstream as we define it. We talk about “the wounded healer.” Each one of us comes with certain ways of doing things and certain ways of thinking. When we’re passing on values and character to our children, or setting an example to other people, everybody’s kind of looking for happiness, connections, a feeling of acceptance, not being judged but listened to. We have to keep up a dialog in parishes. Will I be listened to? Will someone take care of my needs?

Perhaps we can get very busy in church work and think we’re doing something, I don’t know, better than what we do in our own homes. So one of the questions we ask should be is someone too tied up with things at church at the expense of really taking time away from what is appropriate and necessary to do at home, because we are a domestic church, and church really begins in the home. It starts with mother and child and father, or persons who fulfill those roles in different ways.

TCNW: How did your own experience lead you into this ministry?

MP: I feel called to family ministry because when things fall apart in a family, like “Why did my mom have to die?”, and the different challenges parents face raising children, you can feel very depressed, very alone, very isolated, and you can be afraid to talk about what’s really going on, because somehow you have really, really made a mess of things. Jesus said, “Love God with your whole heart and your whole soul and your whole mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” But how does that happen? That’s where family ministries might come in, if they are courageous enough to make it safe for people to come together and feel that there is trust and patience. … Families develop just like people develop. They go through ages and stages, and we need to pay more attention to that, so we can speak more comfortably and competently about those stages and come to a better understanding about ministering to families.

For more coverage of Family Life Month and the activities of the Family Ministries Office, see the Nov. 24-Dec. 7 edition of The Catholic New World. To reach the Office of Family Ministries, call (312) 751-8351.

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