MADISON — After nearly five years serving in Rome for the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith), Fr. Tait Schroeder has returned to serve in the Diocese of Madison.
The former judicial vicar and pastor is now taking on the role of director of Into the Deep implementation.
“I’m going to be the point person at the diocese . . . to follow up and help with making sure that what [has been] done in the prep work gets translated into reality,” Father Schroeder said, referring to the discussions and preparations over areas such as the pastorates, the plans for the cathedral building, and priest assignments.
A lot of his efforts will be in the canonical area with new parishes eventually being established within the new pastorates.
He will also assist the new priest groupings as those are implemented.
He said he’ll be helping to answer “What can we do on the diocesan side to facilitate these major changes that we’re asking of our priests, our laypeople, and our structures?”
Father Schroeder is continuing and taking over some of the duties that had been started for Into the Deep by Fr. Scott Jablonski, chair of the Into the Deep Strategic Planning Committee.
Father Jablonski is also the pastor at St. Francis Xavier Parish in Cross Plains where Father Schroeder is serving in residence.
Serving and the process
Father Schroeder called his first few weeks back into the diocese like “drinking from a fire hose,” learning all of the information and getting up to speed on the Into the Deep efforts thus far.
He’s also leading one of the subcommittees, on worship and sacraments.
“It’s an information overload,” he said, as he’s coming into the process in the middle.
Father Schroeder said Into the Deep is important to be doing at this time because “this reorganization gives us a launching pad to be true to [the] mission of growing in our own discipleship and inviting others to that and following the Lord, but [we’ll] do that from a stronger place where our staff, our structure, our realities match also where we’re at and where we want to head to”.
Looking ahead to the future, he said a “successful” Into the Deep would not look solely at numbers, but would look at souls.
He hoped the future would have priests who are “energized and given life” by what they are doing. Also, with a great collaboration among them, a more “spirit-filled” priestly life.
He added that staff members will hopefully feel more “supported in a lot of ways
. . . feeding off of one another, getting good ideas.”
Another future hope is a “renewed sense of sacramental life” in the diocese, including more people going to Confession and fuller Masses with a larger community worshiping together which will also energize priests.
About Into the Deep
Into the Deep is a multi-year, comprehensive strategic planning process in the Diocese of Madison.
Its purpose is to realign our resources – physical, financial, human, etc. – so that we might move our parishes and other Catholic institutions from “maintenance to mission,” in order to share the life-changing good news of Jesus Christ more effectively in our increasingly secular culture.
Father Schroeder called it “a strategic — planned and forward-thinking — look at all of the reality of the Church — strengths and areas where she’s weak and areas where we need to grow — so that we can get our structures reformed or remade to allow for a renewed mission and energy for the Church.”
For more information, go to intothedeepmadison.org