Chicagoland

Deaf community celebrates unique ministry program to peers

By Michelle Martin | Staff writer
Wednesday, October 2, 2024

Deaf community celebrates unique ministry program to peers

The Ministry Formation Program for Catholic deaf persons celebrates its 30th anniversary on Sept. 15, 2024 at St. Francis Borgia Deaf Center’s weekly Mass for deaf Catholics. This is the only program in the United States for deaf Catholics seeking certification in deaf lay ministry and the Archdiocese of Chicago is the only diocese offering this certification program. (Cyndy Flores-Mocarski/Chicago Catholic)
Father Joseph Mulcrone, director of the Archdiocese of Chicago's Catholic Office of the Deaf, speaks in American Sign Language during Mass. The Ministry Formation Program for Catholic deaf persons celebrates its 30th anniversary on Sept. 15, 2024 at St. Francis Borgia Deaf Center’s weekly Mass for deaf Catholics. This is the only program in the United States for deaf Catholics seeking certification in deaf lay ministry and the Archdiocese of Chicago is the only diocese offering this certification program. (Cyndy Flores-Mocarski/Chicago Catholic)
Participants kneel during Mass. (Cyndy Flores-Mocarski/Chicago Catholic)
Father Stephen Opoku, a priest from Ghana in residence at Mary, Undoer of Knots Parish, Chicago, prays the eucharistic prayer in American Sign Language. (Cyndy Flores-Mocarski/Chicago Catholic)
Massgoers sing in American Sign Language during Mass. (Cyndy Flores-Mocarski/Chicago Catholic)
Massgoers greet a man from Poland in American Sign Language. (Cyndy Flores-Mocarski/Chicago Catholic)
Ian Robertson, director of the Ministry Formation Program, speaks to participants. (Cyndy Flores-Mocarski/Chicago Catholic)
Minette Sternke, an alumni of the program and president of the National Catholic Office of the Deaf, speaks to participants. (Cyndy Flores-Mocarski/Chicago Catholic)
Women look over pictures of program graduates and posters about the program. (Cyndy Flores-Mocarski/Chicago Catholic)

Members of the Catholic Deaf community celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Ministry Formation Program, started by Father Joseph Mulcrone to allow members of the community to learn how to participate in lay ministry roles in their own language, on Sept. 15.

Over the years, it has helped connect members of the Deaf community to one another and to their faith, according to alumni and students who attended the Mass hosted by the archdiocesan Office for the Deaf.

Mulcrone, who has been active in deaf ministry for more than 45 years, celebrated the Mass. He started MFP when Cardinal Joseph Bernardin decided to support formation for lay ministry, Mulcrone said in remarks at the end of Mass.

“I said, ‘How about giving us some money to help people who are deaf to understand the church and share our message?” Mulcrone said.

Initially, the program was done completely in person and nearly all the students enrolled came from the archdiocese.

Since then, it has taken in students from around the country who take classes over Zoom from teachers who are fluent in American Sign Language, said Ian Robertson, who has been directing the program for about four years.

“It was for people who were deaf to have lay ministry formation in ASL, so it wouldn’t be interpreted for them. It would be in their native language,” Roberston said.

Students have gone on to participate in liturgical ministries, ministries of care, small-group Bible studies and other ministries, said Robertson.

Minette Sternke, president of the National Catholic Office for the Deaf and an MFP board member, began the MFP program in 2004 and graduated in 2008. For Sternke, who was working for the federal government at the time, the program was a literal answer to prayer.

She had always felt at home in the church, she said, and was looking for something more in her life.

“I did a novena for vocations,” said Sternke, who lives in Champaign in the Diocese of Peoria. “On the last day of the novena, I just happened to come across information about MFP.”

For Sternke, who grew up speaking and learned ASL in her 20s, the program began her involvement in Deaf ministry and also helped connect her to the Deaf community.

For Sharon DiGuido McDonald, MFP helped connect her to her faith. As a child, she would go to church with her parents and ask them what was happening and what it would mean.

“I’d ask, ‘Why do we do this?’” McDonald said, making the sign of the cross. “Or, ‘Why do we kneel?’ And they would say they would tell me later, but they never would. I felt left out.”

As an adult still looking for answers, McDonald found a blog run by a woman in Kansas who offered answers to the questions McDonald had been holding onto.

“I messaged her to ask how she knew all the answers, and she sent me a link to MFP,” McDonald said, speaking through an ASL interpreter. “It was like, ‘Wow! Finally, God is leading me to the right path!’”

McDonald, of Morris, graduated from MFP in 2023 and is the secretary of the Diocese of Joliet’s Deaf Ministry.

David Heymann, in his second year of the MFP program, hails from Albuquerque, New Mexico. He wasn’t raised Catholic but began seeking spiritual answers after a youth trip to the Holy Land in 1970, when Israel was at war with its Arab neighbors.

His mother was Catholic, and he began to learn about the church, but efforts to find a Catholic church that could help with formation when he went to college in New York failed. Decades later, he was living in New Mexico and at loose ends, and he felt that God was calling him to visit “the church with the blue roof,” even though he didn’t know what denomination it was.

That church was Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The first Mass he went to had an ASL interpreter, and the parish was able to work with him through the RCIA. Two years later, he received his sacraments of initiation at the Easter Vigil and now is doing Deaf ministry in the Diocese of Santa Fe.

MFP offers 18 courses to students, covering one each month during the academic year for two years, Robertson said. In their third year, students design a pastoral project and present at the summer in-person gathering.

Alumni and students say the connections among them are invaluable, as is the ability to learn about and share their faith.

“It’s important that we have access to Catholic teaching, because a lot of deaf people have no idea how deep the Catholic faith is,” McDonald said. “They just get it on the surface.”

Topics:

  • deaf ministry

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