Try to learn a little about a parish, and you'll likely be overwhelmed with numbers.
You'll be told about the number of households and people, the stewardship totals, the number of students in a school or parish religious education or both, the number of organizations affiliated with the parish and how many people are involved with each organization, perhaps even the number of weddings, baptisms and funerals each year. You might even consider the number of Masses offered each week to gain some sense of the parish.
But numbers provide, at best, only a rough sketch. People - the parishioners past and present - are at the heart of any parish. That fact was obvious last month at a celebration held at one Archdiocese of Omaha parish.
The parish? St. Ignatius Loyola Mission in Brunswick. For those who haven't yet traveled to that part of the state, Brunswick is about 45 miles northwest of Norfolk via Hadar, Pierce, Foster and Plainview. Head west from Plainview on Highway 20 and take the "Brunswick Spur" one mile south and you're there.
My office, representing the three bishops of Nebraska on pro-life matters, sponsors an annual conference titled "Building a Civilization of Love and Life."
Keynote speaker for this year's conference - Oct. 22-23 in Lincoln - is Dr. Alveda King, pastoral associate and director of African-American Outreach for Priests for Life. She is also the leading voice in the "Silent No More" Awareness Campaign where she shares her testimony of two abortions, God's forgiveness and healing.
Dr. King, a niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, will give an address titled "How Can the Dream Survive?" Her appearance at this year's conference is quite timely coming amidst her launching of "Freedom Rides for the Unborn" in conjunction with Father Frank Pavone and Priests for Life.
Freedom Rides for the Unborn is modeled after the Freedom Rides for Civil Rights in the early 1960s in which black men and women, and some white sympathizers, boarded buses in southern states and sat wherever they wanted to defy unjust local and state laws and customs that segregated races on public transportation and other venues.
This month marks 350 years since the death of St. Vincent de Paul, our patron. I have a suspicion, like most people who truly give of themselves, that St. Vincent would be uninterested in his status as saint.
He followed what he believed to be God's calling for him and in doing so, helped organize early efforts of charity. This is not to say that charity did not exist prior to St. Vincent's efforts, but St. Vincent gave it some theory and practice that had not existed prior to his work.
Those of you who are raising school-aged children have no doubt revisited the lives of the saints as each child is first assigned to learn about his or her patron. It makes for some interesting dinner conversation when you have to explain what it means that your daughter's saint "died a virgin and martyr."
While they seldom tell the whole story, and can be misleading, unreliable, and even sometimes knee-slapping funny, newspaper headlines are a unique phenomenon. They tease, invite attention, whet appetites for more details. Millions are created every day.
For some odd reason, August was a good month for headlines in Nebraska. Issue-laden subjects such as the economy, immigration and politics spawned some interesting descriptions and juxtapositions. Consider some examples.
• "More federal cash in pipeline for Nebraska, Iowa" - That's not a real pipeline; it's the flow of dollars from what some are calling "Stimulus 2." Nebraska is to receive $59 million to support public education and $69 million for Medicaid spending. Intuitively, that's all good, albeit not without complexities.
The new federal funding has become politically hot, generating interest, intrigue and speculation involving our governor and a U.S. senator.
