After our opening prayer, Zelda said tonight’s meeting would include committee reports and announcements. Our intention is to accomplish in 60 minutes the goals we set out in our monthly general meeting agenda.

Committee reports:

Chairpersons Zelda and Rob 

The Gospel Mass leaders and Fr. Tom selected the Saturdays of October 21st and November 4th as potential dates for our event. Zelda composed a letter for Fr. Tom to send to Fr. Jean Bosco at Saint Rita's/Holy Angels in Indianapolis. Rob and Zelda will be reviewing the planning document for the Gospel Mass before their committee meets. All are eager to begin the planning phase.

Chairperson Brian Dineen 

Deacon Dan and Brian have begun sharing suggestions that relate to racial equality and justice for the prayers of the faithful to Fr. Tom. Since our priests are willing to weave into their homilies racial equality themes and key concepts, we need to find an effective method of communicating to our homilists those most important things we learned in our two years of study. Brian and Deacon Dan are looking at the readings of future Sunday Masses in an effort to suggest how those racial and equality themes can apply to the readings. There is, of course, no guarantee that every suggestion will be used. There was also some discussion about how key concepts our group has learned can be communicated to our priests.  

When discussing this topic we branched out and discussed the possibility of having an outreach event in August or September to visit with people who have been receiving our flocknotes to encourage them to actively participate in our initiatives. Stay tuned.

Chairperson Barb Strasburger

Barb was interviewed along with a few other volunteers and the resulting article was included in a Food Finders publication. Mary King may be including part of the article in a bulletin or flocknote. Barb reported that new people are still being trained to work at the Fresh Market Pantry.  

Chairperson Eileen Arthur 

Bill shared that Eileen is looking for folks to be part of a panel to educate us about critical race theory, perhaps from the sociology department and/or the Black Cultural Center. A member mentioned Dr. Jerome Adams who is from Indianapolis and involved in both health and politics.  Eileen may also speak with Mary King about including such a program as part of the Justice with Peace Team program series in the coming year.

Chairperson Leo 

Leo talked about our first initiative working with the Tippecanoe County Health Department distributing educational posters. Our file of contacts has grown to 83 churches and 35 nonprofits.  Many are displaying posters about Safe Sleep for infants and Counting the Kicks, a simple way to monitor an unborn baby's well-being during pregnancy.  Unawareness of these practices contributes to fetal and infant mortality. Leo also reminded us that there will be a Community Baby Shower at the Tippecanoe County Health Department on May 10th and that his committee will be meeting soon with Aubrey Kitchel who is the Project Coordinator of West Central Indiana Fetal Infant Mortality Review.  

Announcements/Resources

Mission Reunion was informative about mission trip projects, the impact on our students, and the students' fun videos.

There will be opportunities to go to Mass at St. Rita and/or Holy Angels during the summer.

Screening of the movie “38 at the Garden” and a regional faculty panel, in partnership with The Asian American Foundation was excellent. 

The Diversity Summit was attended by Zelda on Thursday, April 20 at Ivy Tech. This year is the 60^th anniversary of the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King, Jr. This event was well worth the time. Mayor Dennis and Mayor Roswarski both welcomed attendees, including a good number of elected and law enforcement officials. 

Zelda let us know that “Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America” will be available to view beginning May 7.  She will be sharing more information soon.

Next Meeting – Tuesday, June 6, 2023, 7:00 p.m. in Room 3               

Thank you, Zelda, for closing our meeting with prayer.