St. Sabina and St. Adalbert - II

Jill and I were happy to join at St. Adalbert, but at first we were a bit wary. Fr. Tim was somewhat surprised that we wanted to join but was delighted that we did. There simply weren't many young couples that were parishioners any more. The adjancent school had closed a number of years before and was being used as a neighborhood food shelf. The church itself, built in 1911, was still attractive but was in need of renovation. Many of the old families that had been the backbone of the parish were now scattered around in the more affluent parishes in the suburbs, returning from time to time for a Mass but generally only for the annual Sauerkraut Supper.

While the church's physical plant was in need of a little repair, the finances were disastrous. The previous pastor had squirreled away money in banks all over town and had invested much of the church's endowment in laddered investments that had relatively low risk but had effectively tied up the church's money for years at below market rates. Since collections were dwindling, things looked pretty grim. Fr. Tim's practice was to use as much money as he could to help people out in the community. If a mendicant came to the door of the rectory, chances are good that he would leave with a prayer and a little walking around money. Sometimes that money might end up at Thomas-Dale Liquors, but the problem of poverty was real in Frogtown and the need never seemed to abate. The slow bleed led to deficits each year and the church had fallen behind in its chancery payments to the Archdiocese.

Fr. Tim knew he had a mess on his hands, but he also knew he wasn't a money manager. He needed help. He found three young men, all professionals, all parishioners, and set them up to run the church's Finance Committee. One of those young men was me.

It took us the better part of five years to get things completely untangled. Fr. Tim insisted on having money available for the poor, so it was up to us to close the deficit another way. We managed to get the Church out of its poor investment portfolio and instead put the money in a series of mutual funds. We looked hard at the modest parish budget and tried to cut out anything that wasn't necessary. Eventually, we decided to sell the school building to a organization that used it for a charter school. The changes were painful to many but needed to keep the church going. And the church survived.

Meanwhile, Fr. Tim's welcome to the Vietnamese community was starting to pay off. Fr. was able to find a series of order priests from Vietnam who were able to serve the pastoral needs of the Vietnamese parishioners. The families continued to arrive, worship and thrive. As the decade went on, we saw tremendous changes in the parish. The picture I've included here shows parishioners in 1996, all wearing traditional garb. While there was a certain amount of unease, St. Adalbert was a welcoming place and multicultural in the best sense of the word.

The key to making it work was Fr. Tim. Tim Kernan was not afraid to ruffle feathers, especially at the Archdiocese. He had little patience for hierarchies, which isn't necessarily a formula for success within the Church. But he kept things going, sometimes through sheer force of will, it seemed. Like his more famous counterpart Fr. Michael Pfleger, Fr. Tim was unapologetically a man of the Left, but he wasn't ideological. He had little patience for the promises of politicians and noted more than once that the DFL wasn't necessarily all the interested in the problems of a struggling parish in Frogtown. He enjoyed jousting with me and my Finance colleagues about politics, but he also understood that it didn't hurt to have a few hard-hearted Republicans around to help him with the money. Fr. Tim knew that if he was going to make a difference in Frogtown, he'd have to use the resources that he had available. And he did.

Fr. Tim was an activist priest. But his activism was all about the parish and community it served. It wasn't about self-aggrandizement. It wasn't about currying favor with politicians. It was about service to community, to Church and most of all, to God. Bringing the word of God to the mean streets of Frogtown was what Fr. Tim was about. And that is what he did.

Next - the lessons you are taught aren't always the lessons you learn, especially in Frogtown.