State of the Parish Address 2010

Summer of 2010

My Dear Parishioners,

Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever! As you may or may not know, each summer we hold “State of the Parish” potlucks in order to increase communication about important matters, to get feedback and advice and spend some time together. I think these have worked out very well over the past three summers and the people who come seem to genuinely appreciate them and even enjoy them! We held three such potlucks this summer, one each month. If you did not get a chance to come or if you’d like to review the material that I covered, here it is. As usual, if you have any comments, questions or concerns, please feel free to email me at pastor@thomascenter.org.

I. A Year in Review

This year was once again a year of growth and change, especially with regard to the staff. At the beginning of the 2009-2010 school year, we welcomed four new staff members. Mark Thomas joined us as our new music director, Bob Siemens and Diane King, our Director of Evangelization and Outreach and Student Center Office Manager respectively, were hired to work with the college students and, finally, the Archbishop assigned two deacons to our parish, Deacon Marty Hetzel and Deacon (now Father) David Nix. I’m sure you have all joined me in welcoming them and are grateful for their service. We have been extraordinarily blessed with an incredible staff.

Our parish also experienced growth in the number of people, both families and students, attending our Masses on Sunday. In fact, we now have approximately 1250 people attending St. Thomas each Sunday, up from 950 just three years ago. I am very pleased to tell you that the number of undergraduate students attending St. Thomas Aquinas has doubled in the past four years. With the increase of families and students all of our ministry programs have seen growth this past year: middle school and high school youth ministry, religious education, sacramental preparation, RCIA, FOCUS bible studies, student socials, educational opportunities, social events for the parish at large and so on. Especially dear to my heart is the 9:00 p.m. Sunday night Mass that went from 50 people when we first started it to approximately 150 by the end of the year.

Although I will be giving a full report to the parish in September, you should know now that we had a very successful year financially. The offertory was approximately $60,000 over budget because of your generosity, especially during the “Matching Gift Collections.” Our development efforts were also very fruitful as we raised $435,000 outside of the offertory for our campus ministry efforts. With this surplus, we were able to do some long-needed capital improvements in the Pastoral Center, the Parish Hall, the Student Center, the Rental House and the Rectory. Once again, thank you for your generosity.

II. The Coming Year

The Staff

We have several changes in the staff this year as well. The most obvious one is a shift from Fr. Peter Mussett to Fr. David Nix. I want to thank you all for welcoming Fr. David to St. Thomas and giving him your support and prayers. Second, although Hilary Rowe (now Draftz) is still a FOCUS missionary here at St. Thomas, she has stepped down as Team Director and has been succeeded by Michael Kearney. Thirdly, Judy Demarest, our Youth Minister for the past several years, has moved on to pursue other opportunities. I want to thank her for her many years of service and excellent ministry, we will miss her tremendously. I have decided, in keeping with our mission as a campus ministry, to have her duties absorbed by campus ministry which will be implementing strategies to reach out to high-schoolers through college student volunteers (this might take some time to be implemented, so please be patient) and by Patty Quinn in Religious Education who will be coordinating ministry to middle-schoolers, including the Confirmation program. This year, we have also welcomed a new staff member to campus ministry, Jen Moser. Her title is Assistant Director of Evangelization and Outreach which means she will be involved in the day-to-day life on campus. Lastly, although not a staff member, we welcome Jim Mackin who is a parishioner studying for the Permanent Diaconate. He will be helping a variety of ways especially in the liturgy and communications technology.

Parochial and Campus Ministry

We continue to look for ways to improve, initiate and grow various ministries at St. Thomas as well as bring about greater unity among the various age groups. I encourage you to get involved in some way outside of Mass so as to grow in your faith and your fellowship with other Catholics, whether they are families or students.

In campus ministry, Bob, with the help of Jen and Diane, is initiating a whole host of new opportunities at the student center and the church itself. Please read the bulletin each week to see what’s going on.

As you know, we have been working hard to improve our intellectual outreach on campus and our in-house formation as well. Matt Boettger has moved to a new position this year: The Director of Intellectual Formation. RCIA is growing tremendously as well as the Lecture Series on Campus and the Adult Education classes at the Church. He and I are working hard on increasing the offerings both at the Church and on-campus, including some innovative ideas that I look forward to sharing as we able.

The Parish Council

I am please to announce that we have a replenished and very energetic Parish Pastoral Council. This Council is a very important part of the parish; it is one of the three main consultative bodies, along with the staff and the Finance Council, that advises me about parochial life. We have added new members this year, in keeping with our statutes. Returning members are Rolin Geronsin, Dennis O’Rourke, Maggie Scholfield, Keith Davis, Mike Freece, Pat Coats, Kate Schmid and Sean McDevitt. The new members are Abigail Bernard, Mary Ferraro, Deacon Marty Hetzel, Brian Hughes, Michael McCarthy, Ernest Acevedo-Munoz, and Erin Poe. I want to thank them all for their generous service.

The Parish Council has its work cut out for it over the next couple of years. We have begun two major projects and are beginning a third. The first began over a year and a half ago: the Foodbank Task Force which is studying and planning ways to improve and expand this important ministry by joining with other Boulder parishes and moving to a downtown location. The second is the Social Events sub-committee which is planning to improve the efficiency and organization our many social events that have been growing the past couple of years. The third task is the major work of improving our facilities which have great needs.

III. Facilities Improvements

A Brief History

For those of you who are new to the parish and to those of you who may need a refresher, we attempted a massive overhaul of our facilities beginning in 2000 and concluding unsuccessfully in 2006. This project was called “Faith on the Hill” and it attempted to expand the Church with a new sanctuary while renovating the existing Church into office space, a student center and classrooms. This was a comprehensive plan that would have addressed all of our difficulties: a lack of seating, classroom space, office space and student center needs. It would have effectively moved all of our facilities into one building and would have been wonderful if it would have worked. The plan was to demolish the two houses to the south of the church and build a new church on those lots. The existing church would have then been remodeled into a two-story student center/pastoral center. Several things happened that thwarted this dream.

• The dot-com bubble burst in 2001 (other ecclesial and political difficulties began as well) and many people began moving away from Boulder and/or St. Thomas. As a result our attendance began to drop and continued to drop through 2007. It is now on the rise again and our facilities are once-again feeling the strain.
• In 2004-2005, a great gift was given to the parish by the Archdiocese: the Student Center on 15^th and Euclid. This alleviated the meeting space, classroom and office space “crunch” for the time being.
• In 2005-2006, through the initiative of the neighbors, the city declared two blocks of 14^th Street as “Historical District” in order to prevent the demolition of the parish’s two houses to the south of the Church.
• In 2006, it was announced that the beloved Paulist Fathers would no longer be serving at St. Thomas Aquinas casting an uncertainty over everything at the parish.
• The capital campaign failed to raise the necessary funds for the project to move forward. $1.1 million out of the $3.5 million needed was raised through the campaign; most of that money was spent on purchasing the second house south of the parish for demolition. (We still own that house and are renting it to tenants).

We once again find ourselves in need of addressing the needs and inadequacies of our facilities. Some of the previous needs have been alleviated but others have gone unaddressed for many years now. My approach over the past four years has been to strengthen and grow our community and ministry while putting the facility needs on the “back-burner.” We are in a much better situation than we were four years ago and we can no longer afford to do that! There are both immediate practical and theological, liturgical and spiritual reasons why we should do this.

The Current Situation

As with all parishes and ministries, St. Thomas Aquinas has been built up, preserved and renewed by each succeeding generation. We have what we have today (a beautiful church, rectory, pastoral center, youth house and student center) because those who came before us (many of whom are still with us) cared deeply about “the Catholic Church on the Hill” and ministry to the University of Colorado. We are now called to do the same: to provide for the future generations of Catholics at the University and the Hill neighborhood. If we don’t do it, who will?

The immediate practical needs are these: aging buildings along with all their systems, inadequate parish hall, kitchen, classrooms, offices, and sanctuary. This last one, I realize is a sensitive topic but the needs are real. We are extremely overcrowded for three of our Masses: the 9:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m. and the 6:00 p.m. Yes, we can have more Masses, but most people choose their Mass time and stick with it. In addition to this, we are striving to improve our music program to be of the same excellence, though not size, of the music program at C.U. We cannot do this without more adequate space in the Church for music. This is indeed our overall goal in all things: we should be proportionate in excellence to the University that we serve. We are already doing that in the quality of our ministries but not in our facilities.

Our church is beautiful in many ways and has served us well. But its current arrangement seriously hinders the seating capacity, the liturgy (especially weddings, funerals and other major celebrations) and the music. It has its charm and does many things well but does not measure up to its potential or the excellence that we are striving for. This can be seen in the architecture and character of the outside of the building (its nobility, stability, simplicity and beauty) which says to all who pass by that we have something special to offer, that the Catholic faith is all these things. The inside says some of that, but it can say it better. The inside of the church does not fully measure up to the excellence of the outside, it is a bit disorienting because the seating is in fact disoriented from the original architecture of the building. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m all for fan-shaped churches…in fan-shaped churches. I’m all for proximity of seating to the sanctuary, as long as it matches the architecture of the building.

Catholic churches should have a transcendence or height to them, as this symbolizes the upward movement of the human person to God in prayer. When you walk into a room with height, our heart, our breathing, our eyes, and our soul are automatically drawn upwards. Our church has this, but by disorienting it we’ve all but eliminated that sense and symbol. All Catholic churches should have a permanency about them, as a symbol that Christ and the Catholic faith are the same, yesterday, today and forever. We can see and feel that in the outside of our church but not so much on the inside as everything is movable and much needs to be replaced because of the lack of durability of materials. All Catholic churches, because we’re not angels and need the things of sense, should feed the body as well as the soul with sights, sounds, smells and things of noble simplicity.

Again, please don’t get me wrong. Is our church ugly? Of course not! Can it be better? Absolutely!

The Plan for Moving Forward

I have been praying and thinking intensely about this for the last four years (really, just about every day!). Recently, I’ve been working with the staff, the finance council, the parish council, an architect and the City of Boulder to present a feasible plan for our facilities.

A Capital Campaign and the Selling of the Rental House

One of the drawbacks of “Faith on the Hill” was its size and scope. It was a beautiful plan that addressed all our needs in an ideal fashion. It was also beyond our means. In our plan to move forward, I want to sell what we now call the “rental house” which was purchased with the “Faith on the Hill” money and use it along with the money raised from a new capital campaign for our facility needs.

The experts in the fundraising and development fields tell us that we can expect to raise, for a worthwhile and supported project, three times our offertory amount over a three year period without the offertory going down. This means that a 2.5 million dollar capital campaign should be within our means. That money combined with the selling of the rental house would give us at least 3 million dollars to work with to address most if not all of our capital needs. The details have yet to be worked out with the parish council and facilities planning committee, but I will propose using $2.3 million on the church, both upstairs and down, $125,000 on updating and renovating the youth house, $75,000 on updating the rectory, $200,000 on the Pastoral Center and $300,000 on “soft-costs.” Again, these are just estimates and a proposal.

The Proposal and Next Steps

This work would result in a restored and renewed church more in keeping with the theology, spirituality, and liturgy of the Roman Rite, increased seating, space for the music program and a noble simplicity that matches the architecture of the Church. The parish hall would also be expanded and improved along with all the systems of the church (heating, cooling, electrical, sound etc.). The parish hall could then be used for larger and even formal events, such as wedding receptions, and would have more classroom space as well as a larger practice room for our musicians. The youth house is in serious need of updating and improvement to make it a more usable space, either for meetings or to rent it out to others. The rectory is in very good shape but has some elements that could use some updating as it was last renovated in 1979 (although, we did some work to it this past summer). The Pastoral Center, too, hasn’t had any work done to it for a long time, I’m not sure if Terry Shroba even knows when it was last updated.

As I mentioned, at this time, this is a proposal to the parish. This material was received extremely well, even enthusiastically, at the potlucks this summer. Right now, we are meeting with the city to see what the difficulties might be, coming up with preliminary plans with an architect and investigating the sale of the rental house. We will be having two meetings this October, possibly November, to present a formal plan to the parish to receive feedback, comments and questions. After that, the parish council will take all of that into account as we decide on plans for the future. It will be at that point that there will be more input, not less, into the planning of this major work upon which our future together depends.

Please pay attention to the bulletin and the pulpit announcements to find out when the parish-wide meetings will be and please plan on attending. Please feel free to contact me with comments, feedback and questions, but also know that these meetings will answer many, if not all, of your questions. With prayers and blessings, I remain

Your brother in Christ,

Father Kevin