AMDG
Dear
faithful Deacon:
First of all, thank you so much for
giving the rest of your life to God, His Church, and to us. Your work is so important in assisting the
pastor with administering the sacraments of Baptism and Matrimony, serving at
Mass and thus making it special, giving homilies, ministering to the sick,
counseling, teaching, parish administration, overseeing parish groups, etc.,
while keeping up with the indispensable
Liturgy of the Hours. No longer does the American Church have the
luxury of having two or more priests in almost every parish. Through your most noble vocation, over your
career you will have brought the Lord’s mercy to hundreds if not thousands of
souls and help them along the narrow and often difficult road to
salvation. May God reward you richly and
use all of the trials, crosses, and frustrations of your crucial job to make you
a saint. Again my deepest gratitude.
May I ask your help in promoting it
along with the parish representative and other laymen. Or you can be the parish representative
yourself as at St. Paul’s and Christ the King in Athens. Please permit me to impose upon your time
with the following write-up of mine on the importance of the Conference and
resources for promoting it. By now your
parish should have received at least one poster and a packet of brochures for
each one of your parishes. If not please
contact Roger Huck by e-mail at huck4816@roadrunner.com or call him at home 740-
984-2234 or his cell at 740-336-9128.
ROLE OF THE DEACON
IN PROMOTING THE DIOCESAN MEN’S CONFERENCE
 |
A poster of the 2013 Charlotte Men's Conference
in which two of our past speakers participated.
The poster sums up what the Men’s Day of Renewal is all about.
|
It
is the role of the father to assume spiritual leadership in the family,
but in many if not most cases, the mother assumes that role. As Danny Abramowicz, 2012 Conference speaker
and former All-Pro wide receiver for the New Orleans Saints, says, “The men
have dropped the ball”. If the father
takes the spiritual lead, the probability that the children will remain
faithful to the Church in later life doubles or triples. The Church in American may be losing a
generation of youth. The men must become
the pillars of the parish, not only the women.
The men must step up. Thus it is
crucial to reach the men and the Diocesan Men’s Day of Renewal plays an
important part because the enthusiasm generated is contagious. The men witness to each other. Setting the men on fire means stronger
families which in turn means the renewal of the parish.
The Diocesan Men’s
Day of Renewal will be held on Saturday March 18 from 9 am to 3:30 pm at St. Stephen’s
Church in Caldwell. The Conference
will open with a Holy Hour before the Blessed Sacrament. The featured speaker is Capt. Guy Gruters,
nationally known author and dynamic speaker.
In his morning talk Guy
Gruters will reveal how his faith and trust in God carried him through his
ordeal as a Prisoner of War in the notorious “Hanoi Hilton” and other camps in
North Vietnam for five years. Since
bitterness is self-destructing, he will share in the afternoon talk how he
learned to show mercy and forgive his brutal captors who tortured him and deal
with people in a business environment.
The participants will discover how they can apply mercy, forgiveness,
faith, and trust to their daily lives as sources of strength in difficult times
and a means to grow in holiness. Capt.
Gruters is a 4th Degree member of the Knights of Columbus.
Drawing from his diverse experience and being a father
of seven children, he will also touch on “Leadership and Teamwork in the
Family, Church, and the Community”. He
is the author of the book, “Locked Up With God”.
Bishop
Monforton will give a talk and preside at Mass.
Confession with a Penance Service is also offered. A bag lunch will be served. This is a hard sell for many men, but the Lord will help
us. If we can mobilize an average of 10
men from every parish in the diocese, this event would be a smashing
success!
The Ideal. We have found that when the
pastor enthusiastically backs the Men’s Conference, participation of the men
significantly increases. The ideal is
for the pastor to accompany his men; we need confessors. The deacon can go with or instead of the
pastor. This is a great opportunity to
become closer to the men and know them better.
This helps parish solidarity as the men also get to know each other
better. For those in the southern end of
the diocese, the distance might be great, but that makes the Conference a Lenten
sacrifice and gives it a pilgrimage flavor with enjoyable fellowship,
discussion about points brought out, and prayer such as the rosary and the
Divine Mercy Chaplet.
We
cannot expect the already busy and overworked pastor to constantly promote the
Diocesan Men’s Day of Renewal. We are
grateful that many promote the Conference as bulletin blurbs, the brochure as a
bulletin insert, including a prayer for its success in the Offertory Petitions
at daily and Sunday Mass, give plugs from the pulpit after Sunday Mass,
etc. The pastor cannot do it alone; he
needs the help of the laity. However
there is much the pastor can do with little effort on his part. The deacon can do much of that instead of the
pastor.
Useful Resources.
The deacon can utilize our Conference Blog at http://diosteubmen.blogspot.com. This year the series (updated over time) will begin with Blog #111 – Overview; and continue with 112) Ad Form; 113) Diocesan Press Release #1; 114) Possible Short Bulletin
Announcements; 115) Promotion Ideas; 116) Functions & Crucial Importance of
the Parish Rep; 117) Sign Up Sheet; 118) Sample Bulletin Insert; 119) Diocesan Press Release #2; 122) Example
of an After Mass Talk By a Layman; 123) Possible Pulpit Announcements; 124) Diocesan Press Release #3 125) Catholic Newspaper Press Release; 126) Secular Press Release; 127) Our Ad in the Program Pamphlet; and 128) Highlights of the 2017 Men's Conference.
The
bottom of the home page of the diocesan website at www.diosteub.org
has a link to the brochure and Additional Information. You should have received by now a poster and
a packet of brochures for each of your parishes. If not, please inform me. For your convenience you will find attached
1) the Conference brochure with a 2) registration forms, 3) Additional
Information, 4) Sample Bulletin Announcements, 5) Promotion Ideas, and 6)
Functions of the Parish Representative.
There
are also interesting articles on men’s spirituality at diosteubmen.blogspot.com,
along with summaries of past talks, and other information. After the Conference and throughout the year,
articles will be added to help the men keep in good spiritual shape. Clergy, Religious, and knowledgeable layman
are invited to submit articles.
Many
if not most men will hardly notice the brochure as a bulletin insert, poster,
bulletin blurbs, etc. although they are indeed important and helpful. What they can’t miss is the one-on-one
personal selling by their peers, i.e., talking it up. The most effective form of advertising or
promotion is word of mouth. Most effective
is the witness of men who have gone to a previous Conference. What is needed is a little “arm twisting”
figuratively. And of course there’s
Facebook, Twitter, texting, and the old fashioned phone calling.
The
Parish Representative is crucial. As in any organization, the executive must
delegate as much as possible. The key is
to ask one or two good men to be parish representatives. If one of them is a knight, he could have
access to the local council of the Knights of Columbus. Their main job is to promote the Conference,
mainly by one-on-one personal selling, register the men, and organize them to
go together in the parish van, car pool or bus. He also helps the pastor to utilize the
resources mentioned in the previous paragraph as submitting blurbs and an
insert for the Sunday bulletin. The
parish rep can try to talk to each man in the parish before and after Mass or Stations
of the Cross or other devotions, during fish fries, at parish or Knights of Columbus
meetings, and other activities. Please
send the names, e-mail address, and phone number of the chosen parish
representative(s) to both “Don Coen - Chair Diocesan Men's Day of Renewal” donandmargcoen@yahoo.com and to me at paulrsebastian@yahoo.com.
The deacon may be the parish representative as in the
case of St. Paul’s and Christ the King in Athens. Or the deacon may supervise the promotional
efforts of two or three laymen.
Men
may register individually or the parish representative may collect the
registration forms with payment and send them to Roger Huck; %Men’s Day of
Renewal, P.O. Box 54; Beverly, OH 45715.
This would save considerable time waiting at the door on the morning of
the Conference. Checks for the
Registration cost of $25.00 per person
are to be made payable to the Diocese of
Steubenville with “Men's Day of
Renewal” written on the memo line of the check. If any man would like to go, but can’t afford
it, we’ll find a way.
Once
the Conference is over, the clergy and religious of the diocese are invited to
submit for the Conference Blog at http://diosteubmen.blogspot.com
articles or copies of homilies that are particularly appropriate for men’s
spirituality.
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