March 20, 2006VOL. 44, NO. 6Oakland, CA

Theology school grads find new ways to minister

By Sharon Abercrombie
Staff writer

It doesn’t matter whether they are lay, clergy, or members of women’s or men's religious communities. It doesn’t matter what type of ministry they are involved with – either in formal church settings or out in the world. The major question which keeps them grounded and focused is “Where is God in all of this?” And their answer is: “Everywhere.”

“You don’t have to go charging off to heaven to find God,” muses Franciscan Father Adrian Peelo, a priest currently studying at the Franciscan School of Theology in Berkeley for a master’s degree in theology.

Father Peelo’s quip effectively sums up the direction of theological education in the 21st century. It brings to mind similar sage advice Bay Area Buddhist teacher Ram Dass put forth more than 30 years ago: “Be here now.”

Contemporary Catholic ministry is “being here
now.” It is present to the poor, the marginalized, to middle-class kids and their parents, to college students, business colleagues, and social activists -- to the entire world, enlivened by the call of Vatican II to be church in the modern world.

Father Peelo is taking time out from his ministry to African and Pakistani Muslim immigrants who have resettled in Dublin, Ireland, to broaden his expertise in working with multicultural populations. He’s been heavily involved already, starting an advocacy organization in Dublin to help “poor vulnerable people” -- asylum seekers -- get their immigration papers processed.

Serving them “introduced me to Islam, a whole new culture, and it has changed me from within, by bringing home to me that everybody is of unique value and manifests some fruit of the Divine,” he said, adding that he’s “a natural ecumenist.”

His Dublin situation was mutually enhancing. An overworked Pakistani imam (Islamic teacher) who had many responsibilities to his growing immigrant flock in Ireland invited the Franciscan to become an honorary stand-in, to officiate at prayers for the dead. “One doesn’t have to give up one’s faith to convene with a Muslim, a Lutheran or a Methodist,” Father Peelo said.

Amy Schultz’s work as an anti-nuclear activist isn’t always “mutually enhancing” or well-received by the American public. Schultz, 30, directs the Nevada Desert Experience, an organization working for the abolition of all nuclear weapons and a ban on the return to full-scale nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site.

“Sometimes I get negative responses from people who don’t understand how faith and social justice are inextricably linked, or from people who are avid Bush supporters,” she said.

The faith-based group works for personal transformation and nonviolent social change through education, prayer and meditation, and an option to do civil disobedience at the gates of the Nevada Test Site.

“We try to create an opportunity to visit the desert and witness the amazing beauty of the land, while understanding that it is one of the most bombed places on our planet,” said Schultz.

“Most people think it’s interesting and exciting because it involves something that is not in our every day conscience,” she said. “People are also often surprised that the nuclear question is still an issue and that our government spends just as much money and more on nuclear weapons development than it did during the Cold War.”

Schultz came to the Franciscan School from her work as a full-time volunteer with the L’Arche community in Florida, a faith-based ecumenical community which takes care of adults with developmental disabilities. “I was looking for a school that was progressive, inclusive, creation-centered,” – one which would support her goal: to “approach all of the passions of my life from a faith perspective.”
Shortly after her arrival in Berkeley, Schultz became involved with NDE, co-founded by Franciscan Father Louis Vitale, FST faculty member and longtime peace activist.

For Cincinnati Sister of Charity Donna Steffen, a 1981 graduate of the Jesuit School of Theology, the experience of study in Berkeley included “wonderful theology courses, a culture which is very different from Cincinnati’s, a faith and justice group that met and shared Eucharist regularly, and an exposure to gay-lesbian awareness.”

Sister Steffen returned to the Midwest to a parish with shared ministry. “I did marriage preparation and found that I was the first non-cleric in Cincinnati to be an advocate for people seeking annulments.” She also gave homilies regularly, visited the sick, and became involved in RCIA, returning occasionally to the Oakland Diocese to give RCIA training.

Today she does spiritual direction and conducts retreats. In recent years she has served as part of a national writing team creating resources for parish initiation teams, including “Discerning Disciples: Listening to God’s Voice in Christian Initiation.” Originally published by Paulist Press, the book is now available through Liturgy Training Publications.

Asked how she sees ecclesial lay ministry evolving in the 21st century, Sister Steffen said she senses that “the laity knows they are church in a whole new way.”

“With fewer ordained persons and fewer male and female religious who previously exerted much leadership, there may be a ‘happy fault’ effect in that ecclesial lay leaders will have more opportunities for leadership in ministry,” she said.

Training and supporting ecclesial lay ministers is at the heart of the work of Kelly Dulka. Besides directing the diocesan Faith and Ministry Formation department that includes the School for Pastoral Ministry, she served as chair for the National Association of Lay Ministry from 2002-2004 and was instrumental in the creation of Holy Names University’s master’s program in ecclesial lay ministry, tailored to lay persons already engaged in ministry.

Dulka, who has a master’s degree in social welfare from UC Berkeley and worked as director of religious education at Our Lady of Grace Parish in Castro Valley, became part of the university’s first cohort. Another member of the class, Tonya Alves Richardson, is now the associate director of the School for Pastoral Ministry, a three-year training program for parish lay ministers.

“There is no limit to the need for well-formed ministers,” said Dulka. Training programs for ecclesial lay ministers send people back to their parishes, inspired and knowledgeable, ready to evangelize and spread the gospel message. Even if they choose not to go into parish ministry, today’s pressing social justice concerns open the way for people to speak out for the marginalized, she said.

Carrie Rehak is living out her vocation in ecclesial lay ministry by combining art and religion, especially “where the spheres of ethics and aesthetics overlap” in both art and life.

Rehak, a graduate of the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, is full-time coordinator of high school youth ministry at St. Monica Parish in Moraga.

In her spare time, she creates liturgical art and teaches world religions and theology in numerous venues around the diocese.
For one January term at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, Rehak taught a course on “Beauty and the Grotesque in Art, Life and Religion.”

“We looked at how our understanding of what is beautiful and what is grotesque impacts our religious and civic engagements,” explained Rehak. The class concluded with a student-led interfaith liturgy on the vigil of the execution of Donald Beardslee.

A few years ago, Rehak helped create a public community art project at St. Elizabeth School’s Garden of Learning.

A trained iconographer, Rehak worked with students from the Oakland school and St. Monica’s religious education program to create the Stations of the Cross from an ecological perspective with crayons, paints and markers. Rehak led the kids in a guided meditation about the plight of the earth, and how it is undergoing its own kind of crucifixion through human insensitivity and greed.

Then Rehak, assisted by a team of adult artists that included metal workers and graphic designers, turned the kids’ creations into a meditative journey in the garden.

Franciscan Brother Keith Warner deeply resonates with the reality of the earth’s crucifixion. Director of the Faith, Ethics and Vocations Project in the Environmental Studies Institute at Santa Clara University, Brother Warner coordinates a “hands-on”
environmental field studies program there.

The program integrates ethical leadership and spirituality and offers undergraduates opportunities to serve as interns with a wide array of organizations including the Nature Conservancy, UC Davis’ summer training in environmental toxicology, the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, and the Santa Clara Valley Water District.

An FST Regent, Brother Warner is also collaborating with faculty there to retrieve the Franciscan intellectual tradition, which he says has moved away from Francis of Assisi’s original vision of nature “as an enchanted world full of living creatures, all interacting in a family system-like system.” Today, nature is viewed more as a group of symbols, pointing to something more abstract, he explained.

The move away from Francis original vision means that today care for creation is low on the totem pole of moral values, not only as a priority within the Franciscans, but within the church as well. This continues to happen, despite numerous pronouncements by the late Pope John Paul II about the environment, Brother Warner maintains.

Life is not possible without human engagement in ecological relationships, he emphasizes. “We need a more shared understanding of nature and the threats it faces instead of more writings on the theology of creation.”

The theology is already there. The next step is for the church to dive in and weave environmental literacy into areas of cooperative ministries and to partner with public interest ecologists who are out there doing the restorative and activist work, he said.

Brother Warner said his students “get very angry” when they realize that Pope John Paul’s teachings on ecology haven’t been given prominent places within school and parish life.
He said he understands that Catholics have been “paralyzed“ by the clergy sexual abuse crisis, but he insists that the church “is bigger than that” and now is the time to move on to the immediate crisis of global warming and other urgent ecological problems.

Sister Donna Steffen, SC

Carrie Rehak

Brother Keith Warner, OFM

back to top

home