Diocesan Leadership Days:
Learning to be 'Guided by the Spirit'

By Kat Wagner
CATHOLIC HERALD STAFF

MADISON -- The Diocesan Leadership Days, held at the Bishop O'Connor Catholic Pastoral Center October 23 and 24, offered parish leaders an opportunity to gain skills for and a better understanding of the implementation of the Guided by the Spirit directives.

Two plenary talks were given, one by Fr. Dan Felton, the pastor of a merged parish in the Diocese of Green Bay, and the other by Bishop Robert C. Morlino.

Grit and grace of change

"I'm not here to share any great insight into change that you don't already know or that you haven't already experienced," said Father Felton during the plenary address on Tuesday morning. "In this room . . . in this Diocese of Madison there is a collective wisdom that draws us together in the Spirit that can really account for what's the grit and what's grace of the change in our lives."

	Audio recordings of the keynote addresses and many breakout sessions at the Diocesan Leadership Days are posted on the Diocese of Madison's Web site at www.madisondiocese.org under the "Guided by the Spirit" link.

That's why we have Diocesan Leadership Days - to gather together and draw upon that experience, he said.

Father Felton is the pastor of St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Manitowoc in the Diocese of Green Bay, a parish formed by the merger of six Manitowoc Catholic parishes in 2005 into one parish with three worship sites. He spoke less during his talk about the "nuts and bolts" of that experience than of the "bigger picture" involved.

There is a "grit and grace to change" he said.

For the grit, much like the sand that gets into your eyes when the wind blows, it's irritating, annoying, and our first reaction is to spit it out. There is a sense of brokenness, he said: broken dreams, promises, and relationships.   Full story ...