CATHOLIC HOME MISSIONS: Deepening the faith in Southern Missouri
The national Catholic Home Missions Collection will be taken-up in parishes throughout the diocese the weekend of April 28-29. Here is a profile of one of numerous ministries that receive crucial support from this collection. Please give generously:
On May 22, 2011, all eyes were on Joplin, Missouri, where a catastrophic tornado touched down.
It killed 161 people and injured more than 1,150 others as it caused heartbreaking devastation, and $2.8 billion in damage.
St. Mary’s Church and School in the Diocese of Springfield–Cape Girardeau were in the direct path of the tornado.
“Five buildings in the parish were leveled. The pastor was spared as the buildings around him crumpled,” recalled Gene Aug, Ph.D.
He is director of development and properties for the sprawling Diocese of Springfield–Cape Girardeau, which receives regular support from Catholic Home Missions (CHM).
Joplin is at the western edge of the diocese, which spans almost 26,000 square miles in southern Missouri.
“Parishioners lost their homes and the diocese was able to give a number of families $1,000 to begin to rebuild their lives,” said Dr. Aug. “We also had to figure out what to do with the school and the church.”
In the wake of the tornado, Catholic Home Missions provided $600,000 from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ 2011 Tornado Recovery Emergency Collection to the diocese over several years to help temporarily relocate the grade school and rebuild the church and school buildings.
The grade school was relocated to a warehouse near an existing high school and is now home to a middle school in the Joplin Area Catholic School System.
Dr. Aug said the reconstructed St. Mary Church is one of the most beautiful in the diocese.
Springfield–Cape Girardeau is a mission diocese in which Catholics constitute approximately 5 percent of the population.
“In some areas, we’re less than 1 percent,” Dr. Aug noted.
Baptist and Assembly of God churches predominate.
The diocese contains more than 20,500 Catholic households, but they are spread across 39 counties. Dr. Aug said more than 40 percent of the parishes serve fewer than 100 households.
“There’s a lot of driving distance between parishes, and some priests serve as many as three parishes,” he noted. “It’s a challenge to care for such a large geographic area and difficult for priests to do all they want for each parish.”
Because of the small population and the big distances, Dr. Aug says people have banded together to form a strong Catholic presence.
“They’ve been involved and generous with their time, talent, and treasure,” he noted.
Small, remote parishes also struggle to respond to emergencies, and the diocese works to assist them.
Dr. Aug described a spring flood that left three feet of water throughout a parish with 35 households.
“When everyone in the area experiences damage, it’s difficult to find remediation and construction companies to clean up and rebuild,” he said. “They have to come from elsewhere at a time when every other business and home also needs services. So the diocese itself helps, as it is able.”
The bishops’ conference was well placed to provide relief and reconstruction aid in the wake of the disaster. CHM provides ongoing aid to the Springfield–Cape Girardeau diocese for campus ministry and prison ministry programs.
Catholic campus ministry
Although the diocese has no Catholic colleges, Springfield–Cape Girardeau uses Catholic Home Missions grants to support two robust Catholic campus ministry programs that serve students at five colleges and universities in two cities: Springfield and Joplin.
Claretian Father Javier Reyes is director of campus ministry in Springfield.
His program serves students at Missouri State University, Drury University, and Ozarks Technical Community College.
Fr. Reyes, who was ordained to the Priesthood in May 2017, is part of an almost 40-year commitment by the Claretian Missionaries to provide campus ministry in southern Missouri.
Before he became director, he worked in the program as an associate.
“Catholic Campus Ministry is a privileged place for evangelization, and evangelization is the charism of the Claretians,” he said.
The program is based at the O’Reilly Catholic Student Center, which includes a large chapel, lounge, library, kitchen, banquet hall, meditation garden, sand volleyball court, and retreat accommodations.
“Students describe it as a ‘home away from home,’ and we try to be available where they are,” Fr. Reyes explained.
This presence includes service opportunities and a spring mission trip in addition to daily Mass, a Wednesday escape-and-unwind session, and Thursday confession and Adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament, followed by a 9:15 p.m. Mass.
Fr. Reyes said the well-attended 10:15 p.m. Mass on Sunday night is the “latest Mass in the state of Missouri.”
“The campuses we serve are secular environments,” he explained. “When students don’t have a supportive community, they question their identity and self-esteem.”
One of the most popular and fastest growing campus ministry programs is “small groups” — communities of faith that reflect on Scripture and try to apply it to daily life.
Groups of 10 to 11 students are led by facilitators trained by Catholic campus ministry staff with help from Evangelical Catholic, an organization based in Madison, Wisconsin.
“They’re equipping and empowering our small group leaders for battle in the world, and our students feel they are missionaries,” said Fr. Reyes.
“We’re forming leaders for the Church and the Church is bigger than Catholic Campus Ministry,” he said. “At times, students feel the Church doesn’t have space for them. They don’t want to be entertained; they want to get to know more about the Church they are a part of.
“At Catholic Campus Ministry, students are empowered and hear their own calling,” he said.
He said it’s important to hear the students’ voices because “they are not only the future of the Church, they are the present, the heart and soul of the Church. It gives me hope.”
Fr. Reyes says Bishop Edward M. Rice of Springfield–Cape Girardeau is a great support to the ministry. He visits the Catholic center to eat dinner with the students, lead Adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament, hear confessions, and participate in “Stump the Bishop” nights.
“It’s an opportunity for him to answer questions about the faith, his vocation, the stance of the Church on various things and for the students to interact with him in a personal, approachable way,” Fr. Reyes said. “It helps the students become familiar with the bishop.”
Fr. Reyes said he and the Catholic campus ministers who serve Southeast Missouri State University and Missouri State University have the same mission and vision, separated by a four-and-a-half-hour car ride.
Among other joint efforts, they are trying to organize a camping trip for young men to explore male identity in the Catholic Church.
Prison ministry
Springfield–Cape Girardeau provides prison ministry at one federal and three state correctional facilities. Two are maximum-security prisons, one is minimum security with a focus on substance abuse treatment, and the fourth is a medical center for federal prisoners.
Dr. Aug said ministering to the residents’ spiritual needs in these settings presents many challenges due to the often unpredictable and random relocation and schedule changes at the facilities.
“We’re trying to prepare people to return to society,” he said. “These men are in a very tough environment where it is harder to live a Christian life than it is on the outside.
“Our programs provide contact with the outside world and can facilitate their reentry into society and their families when they are released,” he stated. “Spiritual growth is incremental and not easily quantifiable, yet the Spirit is always at work.”
The prison ministry programs include visits, weekly Masses or prayer services, confessions, sacraments, Bible study, Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, pastoral counseling, and the Residents Encounter Christ program.
Bishop Rice said Catholic Home Missions grants are integral to his diocese.
“We have the responsibility to give our college students an opportunity to learn the moral, religious, and spiritual values that are essential in coping with today’s society,” he said.
“Our Campus Ministry programs in Springfield and Joplin provide this guidance,” he continued. “Residents of our correctional centers very much need something to hold on to in their lives. Providing spiritual and moral direction could positively impact their lives at an extremely vulnerable time.”
He said celebrating Mass with those two unique communities of faith is always so life-giving for him.
“The diocese simply could not conduct the programs that are offered in these two ministries without the financial assistance of CHM,” he said.
Did you know?
•The Diocese of Springfield–Cape Girardeau has approximately 68,000 Catholics. They worship at 66 parishes, 18 missions, and four chapels. Parishes range in size from 15 to 1,800 households.
•Catholics are served by 42 diocesan priests, 12 religious priests, four non-incardinated priests, 21 permanent deacons, and 12 seminarians, as well as the men religious of the Congregation of the Mother Coredemptrix and the women religious of the Congregation of Mary, Queen.
•The diocese includes 23 Catholic elementary schools, 12 of which have fewer than 100 students. There are also three Catholic high schools.
•The Diocese of Springfield–Cape Girardeau borders six states: Kansas and Oklahoma to the west, Arkansas to the south, and Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee on the east.
•The diocese lies within the area popularly called “the Bible Belt,” where socially conservative evangelical Protestantism is very strong, and Christian church attendance across denominations is generally higher than the national average.
The diocese is home to the world headquarters of both the Assemblies of God and General Baptist Churches.
This article was originally published in the Fall 2017 issue of Neighbors, the Catholic Home Missions quarterly newsletter and is reprinted here with permission.
