Weekly News: September 12, 2011

Fr. Tom Cassidy installed Fr. Jim Walters as local coordinator/superior of the Sacred Heart Monastery community on September 7.

New SHSM superior/coordinator

The Sacred Heart Monastery community celebrated the installation of Fr. Jim Walters as its new coordinator/superior during an evening prayer service with students and faculty at Sacred Heart School of Theology on September 7.

Updates

Fr. Bernie Rosinski
Room phone: 605-234-3422.

Br. Tim Murphy
After a few days of rehabilitation following hospitalization for a seizure, Br. Tim Murphy is back at Sacred Heart at Monastery Lake.

Fr. Paul Grizzelle Reid
Bishop Felipe Estévez, STD, bishop of the Diocese of St. Augustine, has accepted Fr. Paul Grizzelle Reid in his diocese, ad experimentum, for priestly ministry. Fr. Paul is applying for incardination into the diocese.

Cor Unum

The Cor Unum is now an electronic publication. Later today (September 13) it will be sent as an email attachment (PDF) to members of the U.S. Province and Canada. It will also be available in the Members’ section of the province website, as are previous issues.

Only those who request it will receive a paper copy. To receive the print edition, contact Mary Gorski.

SHST in the news

“Sacred Heart School of Theology in Franklin is now among the 10 largest U.S. Catholic seminaries, according to a new report by Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA),” reports Franklin NOW.

“Buoyed by an unusually large influx of new seminarians in the 2010-2011 school year, Sacred Heart went from 12th in the 2009-2010 school year to ninth in the most recent year – increasing from 97 men preparing for priesthood to 107.”

Click here to read the full article.

Please remember

-Fr. Theodorus Nicolaas Rietveld, a member of the Dutch-Flemish Confederation, died September 6. He was born in 1909, professed in 1932 and ordained in 1937.

-Fr. Pasquale Marinucci, a member of the Region of Madagascar, died September 11. He was born in 1932, professed in 1950 and ordained in 1959.

-The mother of Sally Smits, vice president of finance at Sacred Heart School of Theology, died September 8 in De Pere, Wis. Sally and her siblings were at her mother’s side at the time of her death.

Prayer Request

Fr. Joe Dean requests prayers for his brother, Robert Dean. Several weeks ago Robert was hospitalized with stroke symptoms. Instead of a stroke, it was determined that he had a brain tumor. That tumor has been diagnosed as cancerous. Robert lives in the San Diego area.

Back home in Indonesia

After a summer based out of his hometown of Milwaukee Fr. Tom Fix is back in his adopted home of Indonesia. He has been both a member of the Indonesian Province and a citizen of the country for many years. He writes that “It’s a pleasant moment to be able to sit down at the computer to send a few messages saying my trip back to Jakarta was smooth and that tomorrow, Monday, I will be meeting our ten or so SCJs from the four Jakarta houses for a monthly get-together.  They will be expecting me to share with them on the subject, ‘What have you been doing with yourself since we saw you last?’”

It has been several months since they have seen Fr. Tom, so one can imagine that he will have a lot to say. If you’d like to keep in touch with Fr. Tom, his email is: thomasfixscj@gmail.com.

Hello from Mexico

Fr. Duy Nguyen is in Mexico for several months, working on his Spanish.  As the Hispanic population grows in northern Mississippi, Spanish language skills are vital to the pastoral team on which Fr. Duy serves. He recently wrote to Fr. Tom Cassidy with an update:

“Overall, learning Spanish in Guadalajara has been a good experience despite Montezuma’s revenge. As far as mastering the language, I stutter well in Spanish now, mostly struggling through the nine tenses of verbal conjugation. There’s one more form I haven’t been exposed to yet. But my speaking and comprehension is an improvement from the first day I arrived in Mexico. Thanks for the opportunity to continue my Spanish.”

Dehonian Spirituality

On July 12, the first full day of the 2011 Province Assembly, Fr. John van den Hengel of the General Council gave two presentations. One was on Dehonian spirituality. The text of his presentation was recently posted on the province website; click here or paste the following into your web browser to read it:

http://dehoniansusa.org/uncategorized/dehonian-spirituality/

As noted previously, Fr. John’s morning presentation was about the changing face of the congregation. To read a report on it and access a link to a PowerPoint with the statistics of the congregation, click here.

Provincial’s Time

Fr. Tom Cassidy starts the week in Milwaukee; September 14-21 he has a visitation with the South Dakota community.

Upcoming meetings and events:

September 28: ESL Cultural Fair
October 2: Pet Blessing (SHST)
October 4-5: Provincial Council Meeting
October 17-20: European Conference on Secularity (Frs. Tom Cassidy of the U.S. Province and Fr. Bill Marrevee of Canada will attend the conference in Clairefontaine, Belgium
November 8-9: Combined Councils Meeting of the U.S. and Canada (Ottawa)
November 14-16: SCJ Retreat, Pinellas Park
December 14-15: Provincial Council Meeting