Looking back at the weekly messages of Father Paul Counce, first published in The Carpenter, our weekly Parish Bulletin
Published: May 30, 2021
As you might suspect as my time of service here as pastor of the Cathedral Parish draws to a close, I'm spending a fair amount of time in prayer and reflection on these past years. I don’t want to toot my own horn, pretending that all of the accomplishments that we’ve enjoyed over the past 12 years have been due to me. Instead I want to place the credit squarely where credit is due: on you!
Certainly the most obvious achievement in recent years was the building of our new and enlarged Parish Hall. I think we all still shudder a bit when we recall how small the previous Hall was, and how inadequate its bathrooms, storage spaces, and kitchen facilities were. Now we have a place where people are eager to gather! And it’s hard to believe that it’s been almost seven years since we dedicated it!
It was, as many of you will recall, a huge, $3.7 million project. And due to the generosity of the Cathedral’s parishioners and friends, and people across the diocese, we were able to raise the needed money, pay cash for it, and not go into debt. I can’t think of any other project in recent decades in the entire diocese that demonstrated greater sacrificial giving than this. I hope you feel the same amount of pride in this accomplishment as I do.
Please continue to be generous: Father Cary will need you to be! The two “new” water leaks discovered in the Cathedral – I mentioned them in this space a couple of weeks ago – now have turned into three. And the last-discovered problem is going to be the most difficult to fix, since it’s high up in a pretty inaccessible southwest part of the building, where the roof and steeple intersect. Or, rather, should intersect, since there’s now a gap of some inches allowing water to pour into interior wall-spaces. It doesn’t seem to be endangering the overall structure, or the great organ that’s adjacent to the steeple, or the electrical conduits and circuits woven on and through some of those walls, but we’ll know more once the architects and structural engineers can get a good look at it. (Don’t be surprised if you see a massive crane outside the Cathedral soon! That’s probably the only way we’ll be able to inspect and then fix it.)
Still, the real “work of the Church” is not done with brick, mortar, wooden beams, slate tiles, or copper gutters and flashing. It’s done with shared prayer, with active service to neighbor and all others in need, with efforts at evangelization to spread the faith, and in the constant encouragement we give each other in all of these. Despite its small size, our Cathedral community excels in these kinds of things, too. Thanks for being a part of it.
Always in Christ,
Fr. Paul Counce
