Here is an historic tidbit about our neighborhood that you might not know. The first house of worship in Chicago was First United Methodist Church, founded in 1831 at Wolf Point, just a few blocks from Assumption. This was two years before St. Mary’s, the first Catholic Church, was organized. Prior to the Great Chicago Fire, St. Mary’s served as the Cathedral Church and was located in the Loop, near where St. Peter’s now stands. With the area south of the Chicago River developing faster than our area, the members of the Methodist Church elected to move their log cabin church to a better location. In what must have been an amazing engineering feat in 1838, they rolled the church across the river on logs, and then pulled it to the congregation’s present location at Washington and Clark.

Well, Assumption is not planning a move anything like that, but we are moving our Archdiocesan affiliation across the river. Here’s what’s happening The Archdiocese of Chicago is divided into six districts or vicariates, each of them led by an Auxiliary Bishop. There are also smaller groupings of parishes within each Vicariate called Deaneries. Bishop Mark Bartosic has been our Vicar for the last five years. Some of you met him when he came to bless our new statues last year. We were honored when he chose to join us this year for the Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday.  For the last many decades, Assumption has been the southernmost parish in Vicariate II, which stretches north from the Chicago River all the way to the North Shore suburbs. With the massive restructuring of the Archdiocese with Renew My Church, the number of parishes in each Vicariate was unevenly divided. Vicariate II had fewer parish closings or amalgamations than many of the other Vicariates. There was talk of simply reducing the number of vicariates to reflect the reduced number of parishes; but one of the aims of Cardinal Cupich has been to strengthen the role of the local vicariate office in addressing parish matters. So, instead of reducing the number of vicariates, the Archdiocese has redistributed the parishes among the vicariates to better reflect the present reality. Thus, Holy Name Cathedral and ourselves will move into Vicariate III, which fans out from downtown and includes the central part of the city. Bishop Robert Lombardo, C.F.R., a Franciscan Friar of  the Renewal, is the Vicar of Vicariate III. Ironically our sharing parish, Our Lady of Sorrows, is being shifted southward from Vicariate III into Vicariate IV.

While I will miss the comradery that has built up over the years, particularly in our local deanery, there are some advantages to moving across the river. During the structural reorganization phase of Renew My Church, Assumption and Holy Name were grouped with St. Patrick’s, St. Peter’s, St. James on Wabash. and St. Mary’s on South Michigan . During our meetings, there was a lot of productive conversation about the particular challenges of downtown ministry and how we could collaborate in addressing them. These conversations petered out when we stopped meeting regularly as a Grouping. With the reorganization, the four churches at the center of downtown, Holy Name, Assumption, St. Peter, and St. Patrick, will presumably be in the same deanery. St. Mary, however, will join St. James in Vicariate VI. In addition to meetings by clergy and staff in the various deaneries, there is also a lay deanery. Craig Mitchell has been our representative to that group for the last few years. In general, Vicariate III is less upscale than Vicariate II. So, our gatherings both at the deanery level and vicariate level will put us in touch not only with downtown issues but also with issues facing many struggling communities in Chicago. Hopefully these new connections will eventually impact all of us, as we seek to become more outward looking and more in touch with the lives of those who do not worship with us.

Meanwhile our evangelization team is meeting over the course of the summer, preparing to relaunch the Alpha course in the fall. Alpha is a video and discussion series originally designed to reach the unchurched. However, experience has shown that before we can reach the unchurched, we have to give “the churched” the tools for talking about their faith and answering questions about their faith. In our secular culture, the only knowledge that many people often have of Christianity or Catholicism comes from the internet. Deepening the understanding and commitment of those who already worship here should make Assumption more attractive to outsiders, who invariably want to know if our worship experience is engaging and if we are doing anything practical to make other peoples’ lives better.

                                                                             Fr. Joe

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