All Saints vs. Halloween

10-28-2018Pastor's LetterFr. Don Kline, V.F.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

The way our culture currently recognizes Halloween is more than scary… it is wrong. Let me attempt to clarify a few things. This week we will celebrate the Feast of All Saints, which is celebrated every November 1st. This celebration dates back to the fourth century. It was originally called the Feast of All Martyrs and it was celebrated on May 13th. The words "martyr" and "saint" originally meant basically the same thing — someone who is a witness to Christ even unto death.

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Financial Report 2017-2018

10-21-2018Pastor's LetterFr. Don Kline, V.F.

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Our Lord has blessed St. Joan of Arc parish with some very generous parishioners who enable our parish to continue to function in wonderful ways. Specifically, your generosity has enabled our parish debt to be paid down by almost $100,000 this year… leaving us a total debt of $107,775. Our plate collection increased by $10,000 over last year and the "Debt Reduction" collection also increased by $6,000 over last year. We have seen our parish increase in the total number of parishioners but the number of families who come to Mass regularly changes dramatically depending on the time of the year. The visitors to our fish fry helped us to raise over $20,000 this year.

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God's Love is Forever (part II of II)

10-14-2018Pastor's LetterFr. Don Kline, V.F.

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Last week I introduced Our Lord's teaching on the Sacrament of Marriage. First and foremost, the Sacrament of Marriage is meant to be a sign of the love between God and us. Because marriage is to be a sign of love between God and us, marriage is meant to permanent throughout our lifetime. But what happens when it is not meant to be permanent? We have to look again at what Our Lord teaches us about marriage. Simply put, Jesus gave us this teaching on marriage. It is a lifelong, unbreakable union between a man and a woman. Marriage is like a mirror image of the union between God and his people which is meant to be an unbreakable union.

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God’s Love is Forever (part I of II)

10-07-2018Pastor's LetterFr. Don Kline, V.F.

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Today Our Lord offers us His teaching on marriage. To our modern ears, the teaching from Our Lord sounds severe, even insensitive: "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery." In our current day, we find that divorce seems to be almost a normal way of dealing with conflict in a marriage. But divorce is nothing new because it was obviously around during the time Our Lord walked on the earth.

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