Being Catholic in Utah

This evening I was to pointed an article that ran in the Deseret News back on 1 February: Catholicism has a rich, varied history in Utah. This very brief article is accompanied by seventeen pictures, which tell the story of the Catholic Church in Utah over the past 30 years, or so. I have to say that with our centennial coming to a close yesterday when we observed the dedication of the Cathedral, which is a solemnity for the parish and so was a reprieve from Lenten discipline, that the local news media has been very good to the Catholic Church and the Cathedral over this past year. Something that Bishop Wester pointed out at the end of our noon Mass yesterday.

As it is Lent and I work with the people going through the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults at the Cathedral, I am reminded that this year marks my 20th anniversary as Catholic. I was thrilled that among the pictures accompanying the Deseret News story, was the picture below:

This photograph features Fr. Tom DeMan, OP, who was the pastor of the University of Utah Newman Center/St. Catherine of Siena parish when I became Catholic. Fr. Tom, who served there with Fr. Thomas Kraft, OP (Tom and Thomas then, Peter and Pete at the Newman Center now), prepared me to enter the church, baptized, confirmed, and brought me into full communion. Of the two students in the picture, I remember Consuelo (the darkhaired girl) who was finishing her studies and leaving as I was arriving. This must have been some kind of official photograph because I never saw Fr. Tom wear a Roman collar. He wore his Dominican habit a lot. When he was not in his habit he wore khaki pants and polo shirts with Birkenstocks. The first time I met him I thought he was the custodian or a plummber because he was in work clothes fixing a pipe in the sacristy.

At Easter I hope to find and post the picture of me being baptized.

While I am on the subject of being Catholic in Utah, you may have heard that His Eminence, Cardinal Francis George, archbishop of Chicago and president of the USCCB is here. After touring the campus, he spoke at BYU this afternoon about faith in the public square, and dined with the LDS Quorum of the Twelve this evening.

Meum cum sim pulvis et cinis