Notre Dame students bring theology training to diocese
SALT LAKE CITY — This year the Diocese of Salt Lake City will receive some much-needed help from six individuals who are participating in the University of Notre Dame’s Echo program, a two-year service-learning formation program that leads to a Master of Arts in theology. The students come from all across the country, and locally from South Jordan, and arrive in Utah prepared to serve.
Through Echo, the graduate students work in parishes and Catholic schools during the day while taking online courses in the evening. Their tuition costs are covered; they live together, and receive a small stipend. Some come straight from graduating from college while others have pursued a more circuitous path.
Susan Northway, director of the Diocese of Salt Lake City’s Office of Faith Formation, said the Echo students are especially important in Utah.
“I think they are a real gift to the diocese,” Northway said. “They’re devoted, and it fills such a need because we’re at least 500 miles away from the nearest Catholic college or university where a theology teacher would normally be trained. We just don’t have the normal conduit to get such teachers.”
Prior to arriving in Utah, the students completed a weeklong Notre Dame orientation, which was done remotely. Those who are teaching in Utah arrived in mid-July. Those serving in parishes, who are called apprentices, came in mid-August. All of them self-quarantined in the house they share in Salt Lake City’s Avenues district for two weeks once they arrived.
Already, they have made their presence felt with their service in two parishes and three Catholic schools in the diocese.
Two of the students, Daniel Stanton and Liz Canto, are part of the Echo program’s parish track and work in youth ministry at the Cathedral of the Madeleine and St. John the Baptist Parish, respectively.
“It’s been really a joy to begin working here, especially during this time with a little bit more uncertainty,” said Stanton, who is from Columbia, N. C. “I’ve just really enjoyed the community that is already present here and enjoyed getting to be a part of that.”
The others, Isabel Fernandez, Kate Molinari, Catherine Shackelford and John O’Neill, are theology teachers at St. Joseph Catholic High School, St. John the Baptist Middle School and Juan Diego Catholic High School, respectively.
Shackelford, who is from South Jordan, is in her second year of the program. Previously, she had been a government and personal finances teacher and then theology teacher at JDCHS for two years.
“For me, growing up here where Catholics are the minority, the biggest value of the Echo program has been the opportunity to go deeper into my faith, along with people my age who are excited about their faith and who are going deeper into it,” she said. “Even in the community life, that has taught me so much about our faith and how to live it.”
As a teacher, the program has “helped a lot because I think I am able to connect the life of Christ more to the curriculum content,” she added.
While Echo is a master’s degree program, most of the participants say the service aspect of the program is most meaningful to them.
“I’m not thinking so much about what I’m gaining but I’m thinking about this as something to give to God, these two years to give to the Lord in service, in prayer, in growth,” said Molinari, who hails from Upper Saddle River, N.J. “I hope to just grow mostly as a person. … I just want to become the great Christian that God is calling me to be.”
O’Neill, who is from Crystal Lake, Ill., said the opportunity to serve in a mission diocese is important.
“Out here I feel like the Catholic faith is much stronger because we are different; our faith is counter-cultural to that of the rest of Utah, it seems,” he said. “I think the fact that we’re a missionary diocese really helps encourage good faithfulness from the faithful.”
Each participant in the program is assigned a mentor. Dr. Kandie Brinkman, JDCHS’s theology chair, has been a mentor since Echo started its teacher placement program.
“It’s wonderful; I love forming these young teachers and it’s really a mission I feel called to,” she said. The Echo participants “bring a desire and a faith, and they’re young. They’re the younger face of the Church for the students in our schools. They get to really see a role model of what the faith looks like that’s closer to their own age. I think that’s key; I do think that it helps as a mission diocese for our students to know that faith isn’t just for older people.”
Most of the Echo participants would like to continue serving in the Church in youth ministry or education; a couple are undecided. Along with serving in the Church, the program helps in their own faith formation and in aiding them in determining their role in the Church, they say.
“I’m very content with what I am doing myself, just trying to share the love of God with anyone I can whether it be in social justice work or catechizing to middle schoolers and high schoolers,” Canto said. “I’m very content with where I’m at and my role as a Catholic woman.”
The participants are also keenly aware that they are examples to the youth they interact with, young people who are seeking to find their way in a world that often sees our faith as outdated.
“Truth has no expiration date,” said Fernandez, responding to that attitude. “The things that are true are true in any age even if you feel like in the modern age it’s not. The benefits of living your life with a purpose that is outside of you are innumerable. Your life takes on a whole different dimension and a whole different depth when you realize that you are not at the center of it.” Fernandez is from Annandale, Va.
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