The diocese has posted a job opening for director of campus ministry at the Rochester Institute of Technology:
“Director of Campus Ministry – RIT Newman Community – Rochester, NY – seeking applicants (priest preferred) for this full-time, 12 month position to oversee aspsects of the Newman Community of Rochester Institute of Technology and directs other staff and volunteers in providing a full range of services and ministry programs. Duties will include forming and fashions appropriate liturgical, spiritual, educational, service and community building programs; provides for the sacramental and pastoral needs of the students, including direction of RCIA process and formation for Confirmation; directs evangelization and outreach to alienated and un-churched in the campus community; calls forth lay leadership; develops social justice and service projects; provides leadership for the development of funding and alumni relations. Qualifications include a MA in theology or M.Div., three years of experience in the field, Campus Ministry Certification preferred.”
So will that mean no more of this at RIT Newman?
The Super Soaker Mass, RIT Newman
Tags: Orthodoxy at Work
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HUH?!?!
A priest is “preferred”?!
You don’t see this too often in the DOR! 😉
When are the openings being announced? Should hear who is going where. Interesting.
You certainly don’t hear that when it comes to regular parish leadership.
I believe the openings will be made known to priests and members of the lay administrator “pool” either this week or next. In my experience, it has been difficult to get priests to speak very much about these openings since the information is supposed to be kept largely in house. We’ll try to pass along anything interesting about these openings if we hear about them. The known openings were listed toward the bottom of this post.
http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2011/02/aggie-catholic-renaissance
Let’s try to get a priest familiar with what’s working at Texas A&M University. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could replicate this sort of campus ministry success in the Diocese of Rochester.
I know that nothing should surprise me about the Rochester diocese anymore, but a WATER GUN for the Asperges (“Sprinkling Rite” for the Latin-challenged)?!?! There was quite a bit of nonsense at Cornell, but nothing that tacky.
Princeton has a pretty good campus ministry, the Aquinas Institute. The choir at their Sunday mass sings traditional hymnody and sometimes chants the Ordinary in Latin, and the altar servers wear cassocks. It’s actually better than the local RC parish. One wishes that all the Ivy League could emulate it.
“You certainly don’t hear that when it comes to regular parish leadership.”
Dr. K,
These were the exact words that came to my mind when I saw this posted in on the DOR website.
Actually, I am questioning this so much, it almost makes my head spin! 😉
On one hand, I think it is a very good idea to have a priest running the Newman Center. 🙂
However, when we constantly hear that we need to restructure the leadership organization (i.e. “pastoral administrators” instead of “pastors’), cluster and/or close churches because of the lack of priests, IMHO, it seems imprudent to have a priest running the day-to-day operations of a “parish” that has a very small, almost exclusive, memebership. It seems to me that this would be the place that would you put a deacon or a lay person in charge of the administration, and bring in a sacramental minister on a regularly scheduled basis.
Would not a “full-time” priest/pastor at a parish with many members, of various ages & needs, be a better use of personnel resources?
That certainly makes sense to me, Persis.
I took “preferred” to mean a priest is preferred but not mandatory to meet the needs of students sacramental and pastoral needs? Of course I don’t know how a layperson can provide sacramental needs so you have to de-emphasize sacraments wherever possible and focus on stewardship which can be provided by all.