CUBA CITY — Earlier this year, seven parishes came together to form Pastorate 2 — St. Patrick Parish in Benton, St. Rose of Lima Parish in Cuba City, Holy Ghost Parish in Dickeyville, St. Francis de Sales Parish in Hazel Green, Immaculate Conception Parish in Kieler, St. Mary Parish in Platteville, and St. Joseph Parish in Sinsinawa.
Three schools are part of the pastorate. They are: St. Rose of Lima School in Cuba City, the campuses of Holy Ghost-Immaculate Conception School in Dickeyville and Kieler, and St. Joseph School in Sinsinawa.
The three schools recently came together as one pastorate to celebrate the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.
The September 14 all-schools Mass was coordinated by school principals and Eric Meyer who serves as as director of education for Pastorate 2.
Meyer recently spoke with the Catholic Herald about the exciting events taking place within the pastorate’s Catholic schools, the mission and ministry of Catholic education, and his vision for the future.
Exciting events
Meyer joined Pastorate 2 after serving as a Catholic school principal in Iowa for three years.
As director of education, Meyer places importance on the shared ministry of the pastorate. The all-school Mass is one example of how the pastorate can come together. Meyer said, “[This was a very unique event because] we had representation from each school in the Mass, and it was the only time so far that we’ve been able to have all of our priests saying Mass together — a unified view that has been really good for us to see as a community.”
The Mass was celebrated by Bishop Donald J. Hying of Madison and concelebrated by the pastorate’s priests — Fr. Greg Ihm, parochial administrator, and Parochial Vicars Fr. Peter Auer, Fr. David Flanagan, and Fr. Bernie Rott.
Bishop Hying also spent time within Pastorate 2 this past October. He visited the pastorate for Confirmation and spoke at a mission event on the source and summit of the Christian life, the Eucharist.
As part of his visit, Bishop Hying was given a tour of St. Rose of Lima School in Cuba City. Meyer said, “I had the privilege of giving the bishop a tour of the school. Having him go into different classrooms and seeing him interact with the kids, and how much he values that, was great to see.”
Bringing schools together
With Into the Deep underway, Meyer is approaching the pastorate with a unified outlook.
He said, “The key is one ministry. The way that a Catholic school and Catholic church are normally set up is that you have your parish and then the school is a ministry of that parish. For us now, to take these seven parishes and put them into one, we need to figure out what the Catholic school ministry of that parish looks like. We’re blessed to have schools that are each working very separately but, thanks to our dedicated principals, are working very well. We’re hoping that by taking the time right now, in Phase 1 of Into the Deep, to have the conversations to figure out when it’s all done: What can it look like so that it is even better?”
To help Pastorate 2’s Into the Deep transition, Meyer has set up a strategic planning team consisting of community members from all three schools.
Those community members, along with Meyer, work together to talk about challenges, goals, and values. Meyer said, “[We want to] talk about the values for each school culture, what is important to them as a school community — what’s important to parents, what’s important to parishioners, what’s important to teachers, what’s important to principals — so that we can know the school values. That’s what will help them stay strong and be stronger even after the merging of the parish.”
“For us to be one pastorate is to have one ministry, one mission. We already know from survey data that people are going to different parishes. For our younger families, it’s less about ‘this is the spot I go to Mass’ and more about ‘for this busy weekend, what’s the Mass time that best brings my family closer to Jesus.’ So, for us to be one unified parish, we need to have a unified theme. For this Advent, it’s O Come, O Come Emmanuel. A unified conversation piece of ‘what does that mean for me for this Advent? What does it mean for us and our conversation as a family at home?’”
“[We want to] connect that back to our schools. [We want] our teachers to have conversations in the classroom and then have kids take that home and say, ‘this is what we talked about in school on Friday and now my priest is talking about it on Sunday.’ [We want] to be able to give families conversation pieces to enrich their faith together.”
Meyer shared personal remarks on the schools of Pastorate 2 and on Catholic education. He said, “I want to make sure that in all of this transition that these places that have that strong connection to their parish don’t lose that. That’s really important to me. As far as my personal views on education: Arthur Brooks is a Harvard professor and a strong Roman Catholic and he talks a lot about how he teaches the Science of Happiness. Study after study shows that in order to live a happy life, to say this is a life that was happy, you have to have your family, your faith, your community, and your meaningful work, and those four things need to connect to each other. I don’t know where we can teach that other than our Catholic schools.”