July 03, 2025 – Pastor’s Note

Welcome Fr. Gerardo and Fr. Manuel!

As of July 01, Fr. Gerardo Rodriguez, CMF is now serving as our Parochial Vicar, and we are so thrilled to have him. You might have seen him around at a daily Mass at this point, and I believe he is doing the Lynden/Deming Masses this weekend. Fr. Gerardo will take whatever Masses Fr. Thumbi would have said on the schedule until we complete this process of reworking our weekend Mass schedule.

Fr. Manuel Villalobos has also joined us, though he does not work for our parishes. In return for housing in Lynden, he will be offering some workshops in Spanish and be covering some vacations. You will not see him around as much as Fr. Gerardo, but we are still very happy to have him in the county.

Welcome Mr. Ramos!

Mr. E. Omar Ramos has also now started as the new principal of Assumption Catholic School. He, his wife, and his disabled son are living in the house that I used to occupy on the Assumption campus. You may see him and his family around the Assumption campus and at different Masses around the county. We are thrilled to have the Ramos family in town, and to have Mr. Ramos at the helm of our school.

Priest Days and Vacation

Thank you to everyone who held down the fort while I was away. Priest Days was wonderful, but especially our speaker, Rhonda Gruenewald. The Archbishop brought her in because he wanted all of our churches to be promoting vocations effectively, and I have some work to do over the next few weeks to make sure Whatcom County is doing its part for the Archdiocese.

One of the most surprising things I learned during her presentation was that 45% of men who get ordained to the priesthood first considered become a priest before the age of 14. Much of my vocations work previously had focused on high school students, but I need to start taking seriously the notion that an elementary or middle school boy might also need to be encouraged to seriously consider the priesthood.

My brief vacation in Denver, to visit my college roommate, was also lovely. Other than Mass and prayer, I spent the entire time playing video games, board games, and doing escape rooms. It was an absolute dream. That, paired with the fact that I didn’t open Outlook for 10 days straight, has allowed me to come back very well rested.

Priest E-mails

As I write this, my unaddressed e-mail count is sitting at 434. I have begun confiding in people that I do not know how to dig myself out of this hole, and make sure I am as responsive to staff and parishioners as I ought to be.

Well, part of the solution is using Liliana, our priest scheduler, more effectively. With faith formation concluded at Assumption for the year, Liliana is going to start helping me with my e-mail. Her first step is to classify my e-mails by category, so that I can quickly run through staff requests or parishioner feedback. Eventually, however, she and I will be working out which e-mails she can take care of directly.

This is a very common practice is corporate America. However, when I mention this to people (including, at first, Liliana), they immediately recoil at the idea of someone else reading a priest’s e-mails. Yes, one of the defining characteristics of the Catholic priesthood is our dedication to the seal of confession, but nothing that we do except confession itself requires that level of secrecy. Some things do come across my inbox that require discretion, but I trust my staff to show the necessary discretion when dealing with sensitive information.

Related to this, people will sometimes call the parish office requesting to meet with a priest but refusing to give a reason or purpose for that meeting. They will often say that it is a private or sensitive matter. I, along with pretty much every pastor that I have ever met or spoken to about this, have instructed my staff not to schedule those meetings or forward those phone calls. When I have taken those meetings or calls in the past, they ended up being with someone who needed mental health assistance, or someone who misjudged just how urgent or how serious their request was. I have learned my lesson many times over at this point.

Instead, when I think about the most difficult or embarrassing situations a person might deal with, I can often think of a way to communicate that without requiring nuclear-code-level secrecy. “I am dealing with an addiction and need prayer and advice” or “My marriage is struggling” or “I am really doubting my faith” all convey the urgency and need to meet with a priest, without conveying anything particularly telling or vulnerable.

All of that is to say – I need help with e-mails, please know that my e-mails are not perfectly private, but also please know that I think that is going to be okay for all of us.