Subject: News from Office of African American Ministries - Archdiocese of Cincinnati

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1 Subject: News from Office of African American Ministries - Archdiocese of Cincinnati Having trouble viewing this ? Click here MARCH - APRIL 2012 Welcome to the Office of African American Catholic Ministries Newsletter Greetings! The ability to reflect - to remember - God's activity in our lives and in our ministry is a great gift. As I reflect on the last seven years, God has really opened doors. The number of people with whom faith has been shared and stories told has been "priceless." These experiences have affirmed that the "gift of story" Issue: 16 IN THIS ISSUE A Call to Conversion National Black Catholic Congress XI: Keynote Speakers National Black Catholic Congress XI - Travel Itinerary A Summit for Racial Justice: United By Faith Being Catholic Blog

2 is an essential element in faith-sharing. Faith-sharing is a personal story that is rooted in the story of a God that has led people of every generation to the "Living Water." This gift of reflection leads us to sing with confidence: "This is my story, this is my song. Praising my Savior, all the day long! This is my story, this is my song. Praising my Savior, all the day long." As a people of remembrance, we give thanks to the One who has led us this far by faith. So that on the great Feast of Easter, we raise our voices to shout and sing, Hallelujah to the Risen King! Deacon Royce Winters NATIONAL BLACK CATHOLIC CONGRESS XI July 19-21, 2012 J.W. Marriott Hotel Indianapolis, Indiana Keynote Speakers: Reginald Whitt, OP, is a professor of law at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota who was born and raised in Baltimore and attended the city's public schools. While a student at Loyola College in Maryland, he made the Profession of Faith and was received into the Catholic Church from the Baptist fellowship. Upon graduation from entered the novitiate of the Order of Preachers (Dominican Friars), after which he commenced theological studies at the Dominican House of Studies, from whose Pontifical Faculty he received the Baccalaureate in Sacred Theology (S.T.B.) in After priestly ordination, Fr. Whitt first served as campus minister in Louisville, then enrolled as a student at Duke Law School, from which he received the J.D. in Following a year of canon law studies at the Angelicum in Rome, he transferred to the Catholic University of America, from which he received the Licentiate (1993), and then the Doctorate in Canon Law in He served as President of the Pontifical Faculty at the Dominican ReVITALizing the Domestic Church: Summit 2012 Archbishop Karl J. Alter Scholarship Grant A Summit For Racial Justice: "United By Faith" On May 4, 2012, The Amos Project and local area churches are sponsoring "A Racial Justice Summit: United by Faith" at the Word of Deliverance Church Family Life Center, 693 Fresno Road, Forest Park, Ohio The keynote speakers will be: Dr. Michelle Alexander, a professor at Ohio State University and Mortiz College of Law and the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. She is also the author of the award winning book, "The New Jim Crow." Dr. Michael Emerson is the co-director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University. He is also the author of "Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America. The cost is $10.00 per person. Please register at A Racial Summit on Justice [Registration includes Lunch].

3 House of Studies from Immaculée Ilibagiza is a living example of faith put into action. Immaculée's life was transformed dramatically during the 1994 Rwandan genocide where she and seven other women spent 91 days huddled silently together in the cramped bathroom of a local pastor's house. Immaculée entered the bathroom a vibrant, 115- pound university student with a loving family - she emerged weighing just 65 pounds to find her entire family had been brutally murdered (with the exception of one brother who had been studying out of the country). Immaculée credits her salvage mostly to prayer and to a set of rosary beads given to her by her devout Catholic father prior to going into hiding. Anger and resentment about her situation were literally eating her alive and destroying her faith, but rather than succumbing to the rage that she felt, Immaculée instead turned to prayer. She began to pray the rosary as a way of drowning out the negativity that was building up inside her. Immaculée found solace and peace in prayer and began to pray from the time she opened her eyes in the morning to the time she closed her eyes at night. Through prayer, she eventually found it possible,and, in fact, imperative to forgive her tormentors and her family's murderers. Today Immaculée is regarded as one of world's leading speakers on peace, faith, and forgiveness. She has shared her universal message with world dignitaries, school children, multinational corporations, churches, and events around the world including a testimony to over 200,000 people in Sao Paulo, Brazil in October National Black Catholic Congress XI Travel Itinerary The Office of African American Catholic Ministries will be providing Charter Bus Transportation to and from the 2012 National Black Congress XI on July 19-21, The charter bus will leave Cincinnati on Thursday, July 19, 2012 at 5:30 a.m. and will depart from Indianapolis on Saturday, July 21, 2012 at 2:00 p.m. In order to reserve transportation, each person must provide the following information: Among the attendees are approximately 100 pastors from around Ohio who are committing to work together to answer the call to be prophetic voices to address issues of the poor, working poor, and people of color. This Summit promises to be challenging, engaging, uncomfortable, and joyous. We will focus on building community, deepening an analysis of the systems that create inequality, and creating critical steps we can each take to build diverse and inclusive communities. For more information please call the Amos Project at Being Catholic Blog In March 2012, the Archdiocese of Cincinnati and the Office of Evangelization and Catchesis launched a blog Being Catholic. There are three areas in which selected writersblog Writers are asked to address: Discovering Our Faith, Living Our Faith, and Expressing Our Faith. The purpose of the Being Catholic Blog "is to tap into the faith experience of a variety of Catholics to witness how we discover,

4 Provide proof of event registration or Congress Provide proof of hotel arrangements and confirmation number Provide $12.00 fee for transportation Complete OAACM Registration Form [Form can be found on office website] Complete Youth and Adult Chaperones Release [Forms can also be found on office website] For additional information, please call Deacon Winters at ext or The Summit 2012: ReVITALizing the Domestic Church live, and express our faith." It is rooted in the following statement: "Indeed the primodial mission of the Church is to proclaim God and be his witness before the world. This involves making known the true face of God and his loving plan of salvation for man, as it has been revealed in Jesus. To prepare such witnesses, it is necessary for the Church to develop a profoundly religious catechesis, nourished on the Gospel, which will deepen man's encounter with God and forge a bond of permanent communion with him. [GDC23] On Monday, October 1 - Tuesday, October 2, 2012, the Arcchdiocese of Cincinnati through the Offices of Youth and Young Adult Ministry, Catechesis and Evangelization, Vocations, Family and Respect Life will sponsor this two-day event at the Dayton Convention Center. Registration begins at 9:00 a.m. The summit will begin promptly at 9:30 a.m. The summit is a two-day gathering for prayer, celebration and envisioning of dynamic ways to effectively proclaim the Gospel message in our time. The goal is to explore the challenges that families face today and discover with one another viable tools and methods of evangelizing and ministering to the church of the home. Archbishop Schnurr will join as many as 500 archdiocesan pastors and all clergy, catechetical leaders, youth ministers, parish pastoral ministers, elementary and high school principals, high school religion/theology department chairs and seminary teachers and leaders. This gathering will be an integral part of the Year of Faith proclaimed by Pope Benedict XVI, which begins later in October For more information visit: Summit 2012 Archbishop Karl J. Alter Check it out! There is humor, love, pain, and joy expressed in and through faith lives of these writers. Let me know what you think! Blog Articles by Deacon Winters: Winters 2 Winters 1 Developing Leaders in the Parish Generations of Faith: Lifelong Faith Formation for the Whole Parish Community "Everyone has a responsibility to answer the call to mission and to develop the gifts she or he has been given by sharing them in the family, the workplace, the civic community, and the

5 Scholarship Grant Award The Archbishop Karl J. Alter Scholarship Grant was established in 1964 to promote African American Catholic leadership. Its purpose is to assist graduating senior high school students in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati who are African American and Catholic to attend a college or university. The Archbishop Alter Scholarship is a four-year renewable grant [paid twice a year]. Scholarship candidates are urged to attend a four-year college/university. Scholarship candidates who choose to attend a two-year college will be considered. Application Deadline: April 9, 2012 For a copy of the scholarship application, please visit: Scholarship Application or call the office at [513] , ext A CALL TO CONVERSION parish or diocese. A parallel responsibility exists within the Church's leadership to acknowledge and foster the ministries, the offices, and the roles of lay faithful that find their foundation in the sacraments of baptism and confirmation, indeed, for a good many of them in the sacrament of matrimony." [Christifdeles Laici, no 23] Christian ministry is giftbased. Special charisms of the Holy Spirit, which flow from the sacrament of initiation, equip Christians for their special task within the Church. Every aspect of our humanity is intended to serve God;s inent for the world. Each person is uniquely gifted for ministry, and these gifts consist of more than one's talents. Other aspects of giftedness include our interests, motivations, values, passions, hopes, dreams, and life journeys. Gifts discernment must focus on the whole person and the entire context of his or her life: families, friendships, workplaces, schools, neighbohoods, the greater community, and the faith fommunity itself. Ministry leaders are servants to the needs of the community and stewards of the community's resources. They play an essential role in the Church by helping identify the gifts of the community, developing these gifts for

6 Welcoming the Stranger Among Us A Statement of the U.S. Catholic Bishops "Though we celebrate the diversity within our communities, we bishops must also confess that today, as in the past, the treatment of the immigrant too often reflects failures of understanding and sinful patterns of chauvinism, prejudice, and discrimination that the deny the unity of the human family, of which the one baptism is our enduring sign. Such patterns, in the words of Pope John Paul II, "show the urgent need for a transformation of structures and a change of mentality, which is what the Great Jubilee of the Year 200 asks of Christians and every person of good will" [Message for World Migration Day 2000, no. 1] For Catholics especially a recognition of failures in face of the opportunties and challenges of the new immigration should serve as a call to a renewal of baptismal vows, through repentance and a sharing in the mercy of the one Lord who would gather all to himself in the unity of the children of God. We bishops must confess, as well, that recent immigrants have not always encountered welcome in the Church. Today immigrants of all sorts too often face prejudice within the Church. At times their legitimate desire to worship in their own language, according to their own traditions, has not been satisfied. Some have been turned away by pastors or find their petition for a Mass in their own language and a share in parish facilities opposed by members of the parish community. For those who live far from concentrated populations of people who share their heritage, there is often no alternative but to struggle through the English Mass while the deepest experiences of their spirit cry out silently in another language. Where the Church has not been welcoming, many have turned to other sources of community and religious fulfillment, but at the expense of abandoning the riches of their Catholic faith and native traditions. ministry, and supporting the gifts on behalf of God's kingdom and the mission of the Church, and supporting the the gifts of all church members. Several key practices emerge fro the values that guide a parish's approach to volunteer leadership: Every volunteer leadership experience in the Church should encourage a healthy relationship with Jesus Christ. Volunteer leadership honors the abilities and interests, and passions of the volunteer leader. Volunteer leaders are respected as full partners in ministry. Volunteer leaders receive specialized training, rsources, and support so that they can adequately perform their ministry. Volunteer leaders are appreciated and recognized for their contributions.

7 Rev. Mr. Royce Winters, Director Archdiocese of Cincinnati Office of African American Catholic Ministries 100 East Eighth Street, Sixth Floor Cincinnati, Ohio Office: Ext FAX: Facebook: "Deacon Royce Winters" Rev. Mr. Royce Winters Office of African American Catholic Ministries Forward This was sent to by Update Profile/ Address Instant removal with SafeUnsubscribe Privacy Policy. Office of African American Ministries - Archdiocese of Cincinnati 100 East Eight Street Sixth Floor Cincinnati