Parish/Church

St. Francis of Assisi – Waldo Site

http://parish.sfamanitowoc.org/

Date and Mass time

May 8, 2016 – 9:30AM Mass

Celebrant

Fr. John Girotti

Deacon Rich Bahnaman

Weather

What a beautiful sprint day! Temps in the low 50’s and mostly sunny. Quite a change from the snow squalls we had last month! A great day for a Sunday morning ride to Manitowoc!

The trip there and back

After quite a few Saturday trips, we made a Sunday morning trip down to Manitowoc for Mother’s Day! What an awesome day! We were a little behind schedule but still made it in plenty of time.  On the way home we stopped at Rob’s, our favorite grocery store in Manitowoc, and then at Kwik Trip for a snack.  We ate our snack at the airport across the road and then headed home.

Parish History

With the age of the city of Manitowoc and its own history, I am sure the Catholic history of the town alone could be immense and perhaps a book of its own. However, in the early 2000’s, the 6 parishes of Manitowoc merged into a single parish, St. Francis of Assis.

Below is a historical timeline of the city with milestones.  More can be found online.

Significant Dates in the Life of the Catholic Community of Manitowoc

The history of the Catholic Community of Manitowoc is colorful and rich in the movements of the Holy Spirit. The following dates are a few of the highlights of our incredible journey as a faith community through the 19th and 20th centuries:

1850 - Fr. Kasper Rehrl establishes the first Catholic church in Manitowoc County, The Maternity of Mary, in Manitowoc Rapids. The addition of a school occurred in 1857.

1853 - Fr. H.J. Nuyts begins the erection of a small frame building dedicated in honor of St. Boniface in the Village of Manitowoc at the corner of 10th and Marshall Streets.

1859 - St. Peter’s Church, 3 miles southwest of Manitowoc, becomes a mission of St. Boniface until 1929 when the church is razed.

1868 - Fr. Joseph Fessler erects a parochial school and an addition to the Church at St. Boniface.

1870 - Polish speaking people of St. Boniface organize to form the new parish of St. Mary’s.

1881 - Fr. William Peil becomes pastor of St. Boniface for the next 50 years and builds a new church, parochial school, rectory and convent.

1899 - St. Mary’s Church is dedicated by Bishop Katzer of Milwaukee.

1902 - Irish members of St. Boniface organize to form Sacred Heart Parish on the north side.

1905 - Sacred Heart Parish is dedicated by Archbishop Messmer of Milwaukee.

1908 - Sacred Heart School is opened.

1920 - Crowded conditions at St. Boniface initiates the establishment of St. Paul’s Parish to serve the needs of the southwest Manitowoc.

1922 - St. Paul’s Church is dedicated by Bishop Rhode with a parish membership of 93 families.

1923 - The matter of overcrowding at St. Boniface School prompts Bishop Rhode to give permission for the organization of St. Andrew Parish.

1928 - Bishop Rhode dedicates the new red brick St. Andrew School and Church building.

1928 - St. Paul’s School opens with an enrollment of 170 students.

1932 - Due to the growth of Sacred Heart Parish, the new north side parish of Holy Innocents was formed from the membership of Sacred Heart.

1933 - The Holy Innocents Church and School are dedicated by Bishop Rhode.

1950 - The new St. Andrew Church is dedicated by Bishop Bona.

1950 - The new Holy Innocents Church is dedicated by Bishop Bona.

1956 - A new, three-story St. Andrew School and Convent addition is dedicated.

1965 - Roncalli Catholic High School is opened.

1989 - Manitowoc Area Catholic School System is formed as a consolidated Catholic School System for the city of Manitowoc.

2003 - An initial meeting is held with the six Catholic Parishes to discuss the reorganization of the parishes serving the Catholic Community of Manitowoc.

2004 -Letter is sent to Bishop Zubik with the request that he suppress the six parishes of Manitowoc and establish one new parish for the entire city.

2005 - Church bells ring at midnight on July 1st to proclaim the establishment of the newly organized St. Francis of Assisi Parish serving the needs of the entire city of Manitowoc at the St. Francis on Grand, Marshall and Waldo worship sites.

2006 - The St. Francis of Assisi Parish & School Office is opened at the former Park Medical Building located at 601 North 8th Street.

2006 - The Manitowoc Area Catholic School System becomes St. Francis of Assisi School with St. Francis Xavier Elementary, St. Francis de Sales Elementary and St. Frances Cabrini Middle School campuses.

2009 - St. Francis of Assisi Parish is comprised of 5,300 families with a total membership of over 12,000 parishioners.

http://parish.sfamanitowoc.org/history.html

Reflections

As our journey and pilgrimage progresses, we find ourselves less caught up in the excitement of the whole process and more focused on this trip. With the business of May we decided to stay close to home and head to Manitowoc and visit St. Francis of Assisi parish and their Waldo site.

The first thing we noticed is that this is one of the biggest churches we have visited.  It is a beautiful but large structure and is probably similar in size to the cathedral in Green Bay.  It was busy and the pews were full, perhaps because it was Mother’s Day, but we pray it is always full.  Because of our affiliate with CEW in Manitowoc, we ran into a couple people we knew, which was very cool.

Father John Girotti was our celebrant, and if you go back, you will see that he was the celebrant at our first visit at the Cathedral as well.  How cool is that!  Our Deacon was Rich Bahnaman, who is highly involved in the Lakeshore CEW so that was way cool too!  Deacon gave the homily and likened our journeys and those around us to a young girl up the street learning to ride a bike and being let go to ride on her own but also noted the perspective of her father letting her go.  Beautiful stuff…  Is was a great Mass and Father John is such a kind and reverent man, and we mentioned that perhaps he will someday be bishop material.  We shall see…

Being a big parish (merged no less) it was maybe a not as close knit and friendly as a small country parish, but it was way more friendly than I expected a we walked in.  We certainly had a great time and a wonderful visit.  A very Happy Mother’s Day for sure!

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Parish/Church

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, Las Vegas

http://www.seaslv.org/

Date and Mass time

June 1, 2014 – 10:00 AM Mass

Celebrant

Father Joe

Weather

Sunny and hot in the mid 90’s

The trip there and back

Kay and I were on a week-long vacation to Las Vegas to visit Chris and Jackie. We arrived late on Friday.  We had a GREAT trip one of the highlights was Mass at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton.

The parish is much closer to Chris and Jackie’s home than the other parish so it was about a 5 minute drive just south in Desert Shores.

Parish History

We were unable to find any parish history on the website or via web searches. However we did find various reports concerning a scandal with the previous pastor stealing large sums of money due to a gambling addiction.  Sadly, despite what seems to amount to a LOT of good he did for the parish, he was sent to jail. We are guessing that the current pastor has removed any historical information in an effort to put that behind the parish.

Reflections

Kay and I celebrated Mass with Chris and Jackie during out June 2014 visit to Las Vegas. We went to Sunday 10am Mass at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton parish in Summerlin, or SEAS as it is referred to.  

SEAS is a pretty large parish and the beautiful church easily seats well over a thousand worshipers, but it doesn’t feel huge, but rather pretty comfortable. The church is setup in the new style with a semi-circle design with the altar in the center lower than the pews, organ and music on the left and tabernacle on the right.  There is a large but beautiful cross behind the altar.  (I took a picture but it turned out blurry)

Our presider, Fr. Joe, was a fill in for the open associate pastor and we never caught his last name. I would guess he is retired but did a great job. The homily was pretty long, but not boring in the least. There was also a somewhat long witness talk concerning Religious Ed and the need for teachers. It was strangely done after the creed and kinda during the gifts, but it was well done.

So with the extra talk it was a long Mass but VERY nice!  A lot of the congregation hung around after Mass and visited and there was coffee and donuts in the parish center (gym) that we shared in.  Of course they were awesome!

The parish also has an adoration chapel.  We couldn’t check it out as it was closed, but at one time it was 24x7x365. Now it is 8am-8pm weekdays.  Hopefully someday we can check it out.  I also hope that Chris and Jackie get to Mass here every week.

It wasn’t the first day of our trip and vacation, but it was a GREAT way to kick off the week.

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Parish/Church

St. Thomas the Apostle – Newton

Old Site: http://www.stthomastheapostlecatholiccommunity.org

New Site: http://www.stthomasnewton.org/

Date and Mass time

April 2, 2016 – 4:30PM Mass

Celebrant

Fr. Michael Warden

Deacon Steve Zimmer

Sister Sister Marlita Henseler

The trip there and back

We are on a Saturday afternoon Mass trend these days so that Kay can make it to the YMCA on Sunday mornings and that has made for some very nice Saturday afternoon trips.  The highlight will be cover in “weather” but this was a nice easy drive from Denmark down I-43 to the Hwy C exit and then west out into the country.  The church is in the middle of the country just off Hwy 42 and it took us just over a half hour to get there.

On the way home we hit more weather, but decided to head further west anyway to St. Nazianz and then north through Valders and Clark’s Mills.  I don’t recall ever going to St. Nazianz and didn’t recognize anything, but we quickly headed for the nearest steeple and found one of our next stops at St Gregory’s.  VERY cool looking old stone church…  From there we headed north to Valders where we stopped for coffee and talked about my cousins that live there, and then north through Clark’s Mills, Cato, Taus, Kellnersville and then home.  We REALLY had a nice trip.

Weather

Well, it is spring here in Wisconsin and we should expect this, but after some pretty nice weather over the last month we got snow last week and then today we got some pretty amazing snow squalls come through.  One the way down, during Mass, and on the way home, we saw bright sunshine followed by a small cell that would bring heavy snow, that would actually be so heavy it would limit visibility.  Then more sun would follow and it would repeat.

During Mass I think we had sun to start, snow during the readings, sun during the homily, more snow during communion, and again sun to end Mass.  On the way to St. Nazianz, we hit a particularly heavy cell that actually had snow sticking to the ground, but by the time we hit town, it was clear and sunny again.  Weird but beautiful weather for sure!

Parish History

There’s no history of the parishes on the old or new website, but I know this is one of the newer combined parishes and that the church building itself is pretty new as it was just in the Compass not too long ago.  Talking to some of parishioners and Sr. Marlita after Mass confirmed that as well as some of the nuances.

The Compass article is linked below and is where I got most of this info, and I found that “St. Thomas the Apostle, which formed in 2000 with the merger of four area parishes in rural Manitowoc County.  The former parishes of St. Isidore (Osman), St. Joseph (Alverno), St. Casimir (Northeim) and St. Wendel (Cleveland) merged in July 2000.” Funny as I only recognize the town of Cleveland.  The new building was built and completed in 2014 when they “moved” in.

As is often the case, parts of each of the old parishes are incorporated into the new church building, and we note that “Artifacts from all four previous parishes were incorporated into the church, which was built by Hamann Construction of Manitowoc.”  Also “Other subtle, yet symbolically significant, elements inside the new church are the four stone pillars, which represent the four previous parishes serving as the foundation for the current parish.” Finally we read “…that statues of Mary and Joseph as well as the cross on top of the church came from St. Wendel, some of the vessels came from St. Casimir, the baptistery came from St. Joseph, and the stained glass windows and tabernacle came from St. Isidore.”

I am sure that they are focusing on the new parish and its dynamics, but I hope they find and record the histories of those older original parishes so future generations know those stories as well.  I am sure there are a lot of beautiful and strong stories that went into the building of this new parish.

http://www.thecompassnews.org/2014/06/14-year-wait-newton-catholics-new-church/

Reflections

As we have found, all the parishes we have visited and likely will visit are beautiful in some way.  This new parish is named for St. Thomas, whom I have found a special affinity for, and interestingly, today’s gospel is about St. Thomas, or Didymus the twin, also known as doubting Thomas.  Personally I wonder if St. Thomas wasn’t more doubting of himself because Jesus appeared the first time when he isn’t there, than he was doubting of our Lord. Put yourself in his shoes knowing Jesus came exactly at a time when only you were gone. Interesting thoughts…

The new church is located out in the country on a hill off Hwy 42 and is in a beautiful setting.  On a nice summer day it would have been a great time to spend outside walking around the building, but with the snow squalls that was not to be.  But I did get some nice outside pictures including a nice one of the cross outside. The building inside is obviously new, but has a lot of nice wood but is not overly ornate or fancy.  It is just really nice and had a really nice country feel.  This is another church I’d really like to visit again.

The people were nice friendly people but you could almost sense that maybe they were still building community after the parish mergers.  It didn’t seem that everyone knew each other and that they were completely comfortable, but they sure were nice.

Sister Marlita, who leads the parish, opened services with a nice talk and news. The parish is served mostly by the priests out of Manitowoc and we were blessed to have Fr Kevin Warden for Mass.  I have seen pictures of him, but I did not realize he was so tall.  I would not doubt if he is over 6’8” and is likely the tallest priest in the diocese.  But what a wonderful young man and priest. As is the case with the new generation of young priests, they are very reverent and seem by the book, but their passion for their work and their love of the Lord really come through. One of Fr. Kevin’s comment at the end of his homily that “Christianity isn’t for weaklings” will stick with me for some time.

The weather patterns during Mass were also powerful.  You could really feel the darkness and the snow followed by bright sunshine and the changes that almost seemed to be in sync with the Mass.  That kind of weather “participating” in the Mass reminded me of the thunderstorm during my son’s wedding. God sure is good!

While I would have loved to have been able to visit the sites of old parishes, the visit to this parish was again a special one.  We hope to be able to visit there again someday.

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