Pastor’s Corner — February 26th, 2023
Diocesan Services Appeal Next Weekend
This weekend we’re also announcing that next weekend is the Diocesan Services Appeal (DSA) “commitment weekend” in which parishioners are asked to prayerfully make a donation. Last year we had 930 unique gifts, which was the highest in the Diocese. My hope is to break that record this year with even more families giving gifts. If you want more information before next weekend, click here.
Parents Prioritizing Money Over Marriage For Their Children
The Institute for Family Studies, a solid pro-family research and public education organization, published an article recently on a recent Pew Report called, “Prioritizing Money Over Marriage, Today’s Parents Are Making a Big Mistake” by Alysse ElHage and W. Bradford Wilcox. The article also outlines and explains five reasons why parents are making a big mistake in promoting money over marriage.
1. The decline of marriage
2. The “capstone” view of marriage
3. The rise of “workism”
4. Ignorance of the benefits of marriage
5. Cultural messaging
The article is excellent. If you have kids and/or grandkids, I think it’s worth reading about these five reasons so that we’re setting our kids up for happiness. The article ends by saying this: “The Pew report’s findings highlight the unsettling truth that too many parents today do not appreciate how much marriage and family matter to their own children’s future well-being. Based on our conversations with young adults, today’s parents often encourage their teens and young adult children to postpone or discount love and marriage in favor of focusing on education, work, and financial success.
Not only are they doing their sons and daughters a disservice, given the value of kith and kin for their own kids’ future sense of meaning and happiness, but they are also doing themselves a disservice. Because in a world where marriage and fertility are cratering, they may find themselves in the final chapters of their lives with few or no grandchildren. And then, all the money in the world won’t make up for the absence of family ties across the generations.”
Another Fr Thelen in Our Midst: Meet Fr. Mark Thelen, LC
A priest friend of mine, Fr. Mark Thelen, is on sabbatical and will be staying at the rectory for the next couple of weeks and so you may see him around at the parish. (Yes, that’s another Fr M. Thelen!) From Ann Arbor, Fr. Mark is a priest with the Legionaries of Christ and Regnum Christi Lay Movement. He was ordained in Rome in 2012 and has since worked in formation and evangelization with young adults and families in schools and parishes. He spent almost ten years in Barcelona, Spain as youth director and regional pastoral coordinator. Just this past year he transitioned to Vienna, Austria where he works on the evangelization team of the John Paul II Center (zentrum-johannes-paul-ii.at/praterstrasse-28-english/).
He is passionate about the digital world, new evangelization, communities of apostles, and the Holy Spirit. This year he is dedicating as a sabbatical to deepen in the movement of the Holy Spirit in his heart but also in the universal Church. He is currently enrolled as a first-year student in Encounter Ministry School and will be spending some time with us here at St. Patrick’s in Brighton.
I know what you’re thinking. Are we related? Yes (I think). Fr. Mark’s parents indeed hail from the Fowler/Westphalia, MI area where I am from, even though they moved to Ann Arbor where he grew up. When people ask if we’re related I generally say “most likely,” but we don’t know how far back we need to go on the Thelen side of our families to find out for sure. (That’s how many Thelen’s there are in the Fowler/Pewamo/Westphalia). When you see Fr Mark, please give him a warm St Pat’s welcome.
Your servant in the Lord,
Fr. Mathias