CATFE/ATFE Asheville 2019 Highlights

On Wednesday, January 30 members of CATFE met at the Crowne Plaza, Asheville, NC. During the meetings we were able to teleconference with members who were unable to join us in person.

The Opening Session was a presentation from Fr. Andrew Turner from St. Mary's Seminary, Cleveland on his Integrated Online Portfolio for Formative and Summative Assessment, a software he introduced in detail to CATFE at the 2018 Biennium in Camarillo. "The character and goal of seminary formation is missionary and evangelistic in all its forms and requires personal and communal accompaniment as its means.  This project developed an integrated online formation portfolio for the formative and summative assessment of students preparing for ordained ministry.  This tool integrates the four dimensions of priestly formation with institutional outcomes through personal and spiritual goal setting, and quantitative and qualitative assessment of M.Div. capstone evidence and pastoral theological reflection."
 
For more information please visit: www.percorso.app/learnmore
or email Father Andy Turner at aturner@dioceseofcleveland.org

More information is also available in the Members Area/Documents. Please contact Sr. Mary Leanne Hubbard at smleanne@stohnsem.edu if you wish to access this area.

There was also a great interchange of ideas regarding Theological Reflection Models. These included: These models are also found in the Members Area.

In the Business Meeting we thanked Fr. Rodel Balagtas (St. John's Seminary, CA) for his part in CATFE leadership as he prepares to leave seminary formation in June in order to return to parish life. Please see below Fr. Rodel's reflection on "The Prophetic Voice" written in response to the ATFE Plenary Session.

We welcomed Fr. Andrew Turner to be part of the CATFE leadership team with Kathy Castillo (Christ the King, NY) and Sr. Mary Leanne Hubbard (St. John's Seminary, CA).

As we discussed the next CATFE Biennium, Fr. Gregg Caggianelli (St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary, FL) suggested that we connect with the National Association of Catholic Theological Schools (NACTS) and meet as a breakout of that larger body. Fr. Andy Turner subsequently connected with NACTS leadership who has graciously invited CATFE members to the next NACTS meeting at the Hilton Garden Inn in Schaumburg, IL outside of Chicago October 4-5. The CATFE breakout session will occur on October 4, and for those who cannot join us, there is again the opportunity for teleconferencing through Zoom. CATFE will be sending more information about this in the future. NACTS needs to know about the numbers by September 3, 2019. For your budgeting purposes, the room rate is $109/night including breakfast and the meeting fee is $50/person which includes Friday lunch and Friday night social. Everyone present agreed that Chicago in October is certainly more inviting than almost anywhere in January/ February when CATFE has traditionally met.

Another highlight of the ATFE conference was Dr. Christina Zaker's presentation on "Shifting Field Education to the Margins." The resources for further reflection are also available on the Members Area/Documents.

To top off the CATFE experience we met at Sierra Nevada Brewery in Asheville known for it's locally brewed ales. Of course, our Portland-er, Nancy Holt (Mount Angel, OR) was dubious of the Asheville claim to being the Mecca of local breweries. This did not stop any of us from testing the hypothesis.

If you have any other resources you would like to add to the library or any questions about the content of this website, please contact smleanne@stjohnsem.edu.

The Prophetic Voice: Ministry and Theology at the Margins
Fr. Rodel Balagtas

As I write this article, I am in frigid Asheville, North Carolina, attending the 35th Biennial Consultation of the Association of Theological Field Education (ATFE). I thank God for the opportunity to be with other professionals in theological field education who prepare seminarians and lay students for ministry to the People of God.

The first session of the consultation started with worship that reminded us of our work as a ministry of healing, which arises from truth-telling and in the midst of struggles and pain. “Ministry is not institutional survival,” Dr. Marcia Mount Shoop emphasized to us. ”It’s healing opportunities.”

Dr. Shoop’s message became evident in the subsequent sharing of a group of pastors in Asheville on their own ministry to people at the margins.

Presbyterian pastor, Amy Cantrell, spoke about her ministry to a community of people from the streets and margins who eat together, laugh together, cry together, create together, and share what they have with each other and neighbors. Other pastors also talked about their ministry to the homeless, victims of racism, violence, and hatred.

“We’re here to create space where people live together and work together,” one of them said.  “Ours is a small church but powerfully potent,” she added.

“We cannot be a church of pretension, but authenticity,” another pastor shared, alluding to some of his people’s resentment towards ”institutionalized” churches.

What followed after the worship and the panel discussion was a lively exchange in small groups on what we heard from the pastors.

In our Catholic caucus, we shared about the need for professors to keep asking ”So what?” to students when they submit written assignments to expand the appropriation of their learnings to pastoral realities. On the other hand, we also see the need for students to go beyond the pragmatic approach of ministry, to be more transcendent and mystical.

”Ministry should not be just about meeting the poor, but about meeting Jesus in the poor, ” one colleague explained. “In other words, a ministry is about a relationship with Jesus,” another one elucidated. ”In their experiences of ministry, they should be able to express ’Jesus is Lord!’”

These insights relate with Pope Francis’ urging to prepare seminarians to be ”shepherds with the ’smell of the sheep’”.  We need priests who are willing to ”serve the people of God, to serve the poor, men and women who are outcasts living in the fringes of society.”

All these ”urgings of the heart” and reflections go back to the heart of Jesus’ ministry which Jesus proclaimed at the inauguration of his ministry (Luke 4:14-21):

”He came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his custom
into the synagogue on the sabbath day.
He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring glad tidings to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.

Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him.

He said to them,
"Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing."

The question that we need to ask ourselves and each other over and over again then is, ”How does our program of ministry preparation reflect the heart of Jesus’ ministry?  And to pastors, ministers, and members of Christian communities, ”How are our congregations ministering to people at the margins?”

Ultimately, as Chris Sharen contends during his convincing plenary talk on the theological field education as a practical-prophetic ministry preparation, our role is to make ”theology matter.”

I’m coming back from this ATFE conference with a renewed sense of ministry, hoping that I’ll bring this ministry and theology at the margins to my next parish assignment.

Young Adult American Catholics by Maureen Day

As per her announcement at the 2018 CATFE Conference in Camarillo, Maureen Day from Franciscan School of Theology, CA has finished her book on Young Adult American Catholics. Here is the link:
http://www.paulistpress.com/Products/5393-0/young-adult-american-catholics.aspx
There was quite a bit of interest in this topic and its influence on those we are currently teaching in ministry. Check it out.

Catholic Chaplaincy Question from Michael Skaggs, PhD
Project Manager, Department of Sociology
Brandeis University

Im writing on the advice of Fr. David Endres in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, of whom I had originally asked these questions. He suggested CATFE would be in a position to offer some thoughts on the project I’m currently pursuing.

I’m an ND grad currently working with a faculty member at Brandeis University on some projects involving chaplaincy, understood in as broad of terms as possible. We’re pretty familiar with what other denominations are doing but we have zero idea what’s going on in Catholic education as far as preparing people specifically for chaplaincy roles (hospitals, prison, military, etc.), whether lay or clergy. Might you know anything about this / people involved / etc.? We’ve got a huge map showing all the chaplaincy training programs around the country, but there’s a glaring lack of Catholic institutions. It’s my understanding that there is some training in chaplaincy-type work for seminarians, but unless I’m mistaken it’s not usually with the idea that a priest will be assigned immediately to full-time chaplaincy upon ordination. I suppose the summary of all of this is: what is the current state of training for chaplaincy in American Catholicism?

A huge question, to be sure, but I appreciate anything you might be able to offer in response!

Thank you!

Michael Skaggs, PhD
Project Manager, Department of Sociology
Brandeis University
Mailstop 071
415 South Street
Waltham, MA 02453
Mobile: 812-269-2370
mskaggs@brandeis.edu

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Welcome to the Catholic Association for Theological Field Education.  This site is home to the professionals at Catholic Seminaries and Schools of Theology who guide formation for ministry through theological field education. We are a multicultural community that offers the opportunity to collaborate, support, share information and be resource to and for each other.  We are committed to challenging ourselves to integrity in our ministry and ongoing professional development.

Our Seminaries/Schools are ATS [the Association of Theological Schools] accredited.  To meet that accreditation each school has, included in its curriculum, some significant hands on ministry experience that is supervised and evaluated.  These experiences give the students the opportunity and the context to practice and reflect on ministry.  It is the responsibility of the Field Educator to shepherd students and supervisors through the experience, making it a time of reflective growth and increasing competence for all involved.  Through the use of theological reflection, consultation, engaging with peers, classroom time, and living and working with ministry professionals the goals of these curricular ministry experiences can be reached.

As CATFE, we hold a biennial consultation to bring members together with the goal of networking, learning from one another and sharing experiences that are both successful and that challenge us to new and greater understanding of our ministry as Field Educators.

Many of our members are also members of ATFE [the Association for Theological Field Education].  ATFE is an international association of Theological Field Educators whose members include Field Educators of all Christian denominations.  ATFE holds a biennial consultation and CATFE members are encouraged to participate in the ATFE biennial where we caucus as a group.