2005 Evangelization Supplement
Year of the Eucharist celebration to highlight evangelization efforts in the archdiocese
By Sean Gallagher
At 3 p.m. on June 12 at Victory Field in Indianapolis, Catholics throughout central and southern Indiana will have the opportunity to learn more about the myriad of ways that more than 20 archdiocesan offices and agencies and other Catholic organizations work to serve them and thousands of others in the broader community.
This will happen during a ministry fair that is a part of “The Year of the Eucharist: Celebrating the Body of Christ.”
The event will start with a eucharistic procession and Benediction led by Archbishop Daniel M. Buechlein. He will be joined by boys and girls from across the archdiocese who have celebrated their first Communion this year.
The ministry fair will take place afterward in the concourse of the stadium. Among those offices, agencies and apostolates invited to have booths are the Office of Catholic Education, the Commission for Multicultural Ministries and Our Lady of Fatima Retreat House.
In particular, those manning the booths will show visitors how the various ministries of the archdiocese and of other Catholic organizations participate in the Church’s mission of evangelization.
Msgr. Joseph F. Schaedel, vicar general of the archdiocese, commented on the connection between the Eucharist and the proclamation of the Gospel, both of which will be highlighted on June 12.
“‘Ite Missa est,’ that is, ‘Go, the Mass is ended,’ ” he said. “When Catholics leave the celebration of the Mass, we are sent, we go forth, to proclaim what we have learned and experienced at the table of the Lord.
“Every archdiocesan office is involved in the work of evangelization. We all assist the archbishop in his ministry as a successor to the Apostles, to ‘Go, teach all nations.’ ”
A great amount of variety in the Church’s work to proclaim the Gospel will be on display at one booth alone staffed by those involved with Catholic Charities.
David Siler, executive director of the Secretariat for Catholic Charities and Family Ministries, recently commented about how the dozens of programs he oversees participate in the Church’s mission of evangelization.
Siler emphasized that most of the people served by the programs are not Catholic. At the same time, he recognized that the first purpose of Catholic Charities is simply to help people and to renew the world in which we live.
“Probably more than eighty percent of the people that we serve in all of our programs are not Catholic,” he said. “… It’s really important that people know that when I was hungry, when I was in crisis, the Catholic Church was there for me. That’s something that they’ll remember.”
Paula Wilburn will remember the care that she and her daughters received at Holy Family Shelter in Indianapolis.
Currently a resident of Holy Family Transitional Housing, Wilburn and her family are moving in a positive direction after she struggled with drug and alcohol abuse then was diagnosed with liver cancer.
“Being here, the first thing that they did was try to help me learn to stay clean and not to put me out,” she said. “I think overall it’s very positive for me because I’ll be able to live clean and help my children. I’ll be able to do the things with them that I’ve always wanted to do. Now I have the opportunity. I’ve been given that opportunity back.”
Recognizing the inherent dignity in every family and helping them live it out in their daily lives is central to the ministry of Holy Family Shelter, according to its director, Bill Bickel.
“It is a dignified approach to serving the family,” he said. “While you’re individually treating each member, it’s holistically treating them as a family. There’s a respectful and dignified approach to the services in general. That’s done in a variety of ways.”
The staff at Holy Family Shelter helped her free herself of drugs and alcohol. They also worked to arrange counseling for her teenage daughter, Head Start classes for her second child and daycare for her youngest. She is now taking computer classes and working part-time.
With the help of Holy Family Shelter, Wilburn says she is now able to concentrate on “just keeping busy, trying to make sure that I’m staying focused and being positive.”
Bickel said that those who learn about Holy Family Shelter at Victory Field on June 12 can also discover how they can aid its ministry through volunteer possibilities and monetary donations and so help it extend its services to even more people in need.
Another agency working in Catholic Charities that people on June 12 will be able to learn about is St. Elizabeth-Catholic Charities in New Albany and its numerous ministries.
St. Elizabeth began just over 15 years ago as an extension of what was then St. Elizabeth’s Pregnancy and Adoption Services in Indianapolis. Since then, it has merged with other Catholic Charities programs to offer a wide array of services to those in need in southern Indiana.
In addition to offering a full range of services to women in unplanned pregnancies, Keith Stormes, the director of St. Elizabeth-Catholic Charities, said that the agency among other things also manages a supported living program for developmentally delayed people, counseling services and a supervised visitation program.
Although Stormes oversees an agency that provides a wide variety of practical help to people in need, he clearly sees the importance of the spiritual aspects of its ministries.
“We do not shy away from the spiritual aspect of counseling,” he said. “I think it’s vital to the wholeness of the person. While they certainly have problems in the secular world, prayer is going to have to become a part of the solution.”
Stormes said that those at the ministry fair who learn for the first time about St. Elizabeth-Catholic Charities can certainly help to broaden its ministries through volunteering and donations. But he also emphasized the importance of prayer to the vitality of the agency he manages.
Holy Family Shelter and St. Elizabeth-Catholic Charities both work to achieve the Church’s mission of evangelization by building up families and upholding their inherent dignity.
The Catholic Charities secretariat also oversees the archdiocesan Office of Family Ministries. This office, headed by director Dan Sarrell, proclaims the good news of the Church’s vision for family life first to those who are already Catholic and equips them to spread it to other families in the areas where they live.
Sarrell said that the ministry fair on June 12 at Victory Field will give those who learn about the Office of Family Ministries the opportunity to become co-workers in its important ministry.
“This ministry fair opportunity provides us with the chance to show other married couples how they can support and be a witness to other … couples,” he said, “by serving as sponsor couples in pre-marriage preparations, by being [Natural Family Planning] teachers, by being presenters at a Pre-Cana conference [and] by participating in bereavement and divorce support.”
Ultimately, Siler hopes that those who will come to the ministry fair will learn about the dozens of programs that Catholic Charities oversees, will take pride in them then learn how they can become involved in their ministry of evangelization.
“We operate about 39 programs across the archdiocese, and last year served almost 300,000 people,” he said. “That’s some thing for all of us as Catholics to be very proud of. But if you don’t even know about it, you can’t be proud of it.
“We hope to just increase the sense of pride … and then also to enlist people to say, ‘How can I be a part of that, too?’ ” †