I got the following email from Austin Ruse, president of Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute, about a job opportunity, but not with his organization:
One of the most important Catholic pro-life organizations in the United States has an immediate opening for their chief public spokesman.
I cannot tell you who the group is, but they are based in Washington DC and are literally the leading pro-life group in America.
They are looking for a chief spokesman on pro-life issues. This person will
* appear on national radio and television
* write for publication
* speak in public before audiences large and small
* develop national strategies for advancing the cause of the unbornThe successful candidate will have excellent communcations skills. The successful candidate will have an advanced knowledge of pro-life issues and argumentation. Previous media experience a big plus.
This is literally a dream job and one that does not come open very often (it has come open twice in the past 15 years).
The pay will be pretty good, too. It will vary by your experience, but it will be competitive and comes with full benefits.
If you are interested, send your resume and writing samples to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Don’t wait. They are interviewing now.
Hmmm, what could be the leading Catholic pro-life group in America who’s had only two different spokesmen in the past 15 years? I’m pretty sure I know what the job is.
For a renovated church, it looks quite decent.
Suppose it would be useful if the “writing sample” were a short, footnoted paper excommunicating Kennedy, Kerry, Obey, Durbin, (et al.)?
Sorry, but discussions of new churches in the Archdiocese of Boston when so many beautiful churches have been shuttered makes me very sad. Our Catholic patrimony is being turned into condos because subarbanites are too lazy to drive into town for Mass. The bishops demand nothing from their flock and the flock demands little of our gutless and cowardly hierarchy. They really deserve each other. A significant number of the churches that have been closed are one-of-a-kind structures that can never be replaced while so many “theatre in the round” parishes remain open for business to serve their mostly contracepting “Lutheran” communities. Sorry to be so negative, but the selling off of Catholic churches is scandalous when there is clearly the demand for more churches. Many of our greatest saints walked miles to get to Mass, but wealthy suburbanites can’t be asked to drive more that 10 minutes to Mass. We’d rather have Catholic churches as condos, restaurants, and micro-breweries. What a waste!
About 22% of the parish attends Mass each week. Pretty poor turnout in my opinion.
For Boston, that’s slightly above average.
Uh oh. Is it just me or is the secretiveness here annoying? Can you say USCCB m.o.?
I don’t get it. Please advise.
the question that pops into my mind is, what is Fr. Pavone going to be doing if it isn’t to be Priests for Life?
I don’t think it’s Priests for Life. I bet Patrick is on target.
Hmmm, lets see, since you received the email from Austin and he’s the husband of Cathy who just left as the spokesman for the USCCB pro-life office since they just had their first child, I wonder…. could it be . . . Patrick – the MAN!
If it is a replacement is for Cathleen Cleaver Ruse, Esq., Director of Planning and Information, at USCCB let’s hope that the replacement is an improvement.
I’m thinking HLI.
I wish there were more high paying “Catholic-related” jobs advertised somewhere. Any ideas?
“because subarbanites are too lazy to drive into town for Mass. ”
This is a silly comment.
There are still people living in Boston!!!…they are not razing apartment buildings..they just do not go to Church…that is the problem.
People should be able to walk to Church. Yes, Massachusetts is THAT Catholic…it’s just that people don’t go, they don’t practice.
I’m at my second parish in Mass. now. Before we had 300+ kids in CCD…maybe 20 showed up at each mass. MY new parish has 500+ in CCD and maybe you see 10-20 at Mass.
Where are the children on Sunday morning??????????????
Well there’s always the Holy Roman Emp. job, but Mark seems to have that one in his pocket.
isn’t the USCCB office in Washington? And I thought HLI was somewhere like Chicago. (or maybe that’s just because I met Fr. Euteneuer at a conference in Chicago…can’t remember.) But if Cathy Cleaver is quitting it seems logical.
But anyone who wants to retain the least shred of cred in the PL Catholic world will steer clear of taking a USCCB paycheque.
Naturally, I disagree that my comment was “silly”. Suburban Catholics who still attend mass could keep the inner-city parishes alive by attending there. There is no traffic on Sunday mornings and if they didn’t have hideous modern parishes nearby, they would have to drive into Boston for Mass.
A few ethnic city churches work that way, Resto, sustained by Sunday commuters from the suburbs, but they have little activity the rest of the week.
The Church’s model of geographical parishes tends to put the churches where the people are. Maybe it would be easier to relocate old buildings than to have people try to build their parish life around a building a half-hour away from home.
Exactly right, RC. Being a member of a Catholic parish is about more than going to Mass an hour a week… or it should be. It’s about forming a community of prayer, work, and friendship. So are we supposed to commute downtown through rush hour traffic on Wednesday night for Bible study and on Thursday for parish council meetings, and on Friday night to work in the food pantry?
For the parish to be the center of Catholic family life, it needs to be where Catholic families are. The buildings are built to serve the people, not vice versa.
HLI is outside of DC about 60 miles in Front Royal, VA
Excellent point, Dom. Building a community takes a lot more work than Sunday masses. I was looking narrowing at keeping the churches open and solvent via Sunday Mass attendance. Beyond that is another discussion.
I would argue, however, that our historic churches are more than just “buildings”. They were built for the greater glory of God and the craftsmanship illustrates the committment of the Catholics who built them. The experience of Catholics in our past should be as honored as our own. All I am saying is that some innovative ideas should have been employed to keep these churches open and vibrant. I’ve got a few, but that is for another thread.
Guys, get off it. It’s with John Kerry’s office. I know this because a) he is a Catholic; b) he has said he thinks abortion is a tragic thing; and c) his office is located in Washington, DC.
“I wish there were more high paying that everything going on in the Church in Boston is closing parishes, there’s this story about a new church being dedicated. St. Patrick in Stoneham is one of the largest parishes in the archdiocese (RC of Catholic Light is a parishioner I believe), and they just built a brand-new church that seats 900 people. The parish has 15,000 members from 4,800 families and about 3,300 people attend one of eight Masses each weekend. Talk about your mega-church.
They also incorporated many items from closed parishes: stained glass windows, the altar, statues, a lectern, a crucifix, and so on, so that these items, almost all of them donated as memorials, could live in on in a Catholic church in the presence of the Sacrifice of the Mass.
Here is their web site.
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It seems to be a wonderful parish!
It’s not fair to call suburbanites lazy because they decline to through the hassle of heading back into the city on Sunday. Thank God that somebody is going to Mass in the burbs. Besides, if we are honest it’s obvious that quite a few of our parishes need to be closed. If a church is spiritually dead (nobody at confession, nobody under the age of 50 at the prayer group, nobody even thinking about Eucharistic Adoration) what the point of keeping it open?
Wait a minute:
3300 out of 15,000 is 22%. That’s an average of 412 people per mass….Of course, some of the masses will be more filled than others…..
But still. 22% is pretty bad.