Archive for: Profiles in FCE

A graduate of a faithful Catholic college believes daily prayer is critical—and she’s sharing a new tool to help young people develop a prayer routine.

“Forming a strong daily prayer routine is paramount to building the spiritual armor necessary to face daily temptation as well as the destructive forces college students will be met with post-graduation,” urges Annie Foster, a graduate Franciscan University of Steubenville, which is recognized in The Newman Guide for its strong Catholic identity.

Now employed by the Catholic app named “Hallow” that hosts more than 5,000 audio-guided prayers and meditations, Annie believes the tool can be a great resource for young people to grow in their relationship with Jesus Christ. In just three years, the app has become the top Catholic app in the app store, with 50,000 five-star reviews and two million downloads.

“I believe Hallow’s success and why it is a helpful resource for young adults, lies first and foremost in the fact that prayer is where we come to know the person of Jesus Christ and where we invite Him into a personal relationship. The Catholic apologetics space is overflowing with catechetical resources to help us to know and defend our faith. Hallow’s primary purpose however is to serve as an instrument that our Lord can use to speak to our hearts and where we can speak to His.”

Hallow allows users to set-up alerts for prayer throughout the day, and then set time aside for audio prayers like the Angelus and Rosary. It “meets students where they are” both physically (on their phones) and spiritually (on their faith journeys), explains Annie. Schools and colleges like Franciscan University are partnering with Hallow to make the app available to students.

The app is also in high demand to respond to the mental health crisis that many young people are facing today.

“In recent years, young adults have been experiencing and openly sharing more and more the mental health issues they’ve been facing. The remedies of the world are often not only contrary to our faith but lead the youth into even greater confusion and desolation,” explained Annie. “Hallow responded to this reality by working with Catholic mental health professionals such as Dr. Bob Schuchts and religious such as Sr. Miriam James to create meditations to address the healing of wounds, addictions as well as various other topics.”

In her life and work, Annie draws the on formation she received at Franciscan University “on a daily basis.”

“Franciscan is where I fell in love with the study of philosophy, particularly Christian personalism and the thought of Dietrich von Hildebrand and his wife Alice. I worked as a student fellow for the Hildebrand Project, a non-profit dedicated to the dissemination of Hildebrands thought and witness,” explained Annie. “Christian personalism tints the lense with which I view my faith and my work because it is a philosophy rooted in an appreciation of the dignity of the human person and therefore a philosophy that can be lived.”

She was also an active member of Franciscan’s lacrosse team. “Coach Maura Carapellotti transformed simple exercises into spiritual exercises. Coach emboldened us to play our sport with total freedom and fearlessness because she convinced us that our identities were not based on the scoreboard but in our relationship with our Lord. We truly played for an audience of One [Jesus Christ].”

“Attending a faithful Catholic college akin to Franciscan not only makes authentic Catholic teaching and the sacraments accessible, it makes accessible a community of peers who will support you in prayer and friendship for the rest of your life. That is no small thing. We often affectionately refer to Steubenville as a ‘bubble’ because it truly is a safeguarded haven for practicing Catholics.”

But “even within the ‘bubble’ the enemy never sleeps,” and the temptations are great after college, explained Annie. That’s why building a prayer routine is so critical—and why Annie is helping young people do just that.

For a young adult used to spending time in a classroom or online, encountering God’s grandeur in the mountains of Wyoming can be a profound spiritual experience. Now graduates of Wyoming Catholic College in Lander, Wyo., are sharing what they experienced with others through an exciting outdoor retreat program.

In Sacred Scripture, mountains are often places of prayer and encounters with God. Abraham was called to sacrifice his only son on a mountain—but then had a profound experience of God when He commanded him not to complete the sacrifice. Moses received the Ten Commandments and spoke with God on Mt. Sinai. Elijah heard God’s still, small voice on a mountain. Jesus often went to the mountains to pray by Himself. Throughout the Scriptures, we see again and again how God can be discovered in the wilderness and on the mountaintops.

Students at Wyoming Catholic College, which is recommended for its faithful Catholic education in The Newman Guide, encounter God in the wilderness and on the mountaintops through a rigorous outdoor program. Students explore the wilderness, or “God’s First Book,” to find Him and renew their relationship with Him while backpacking, whitewater kayaking and ice climbing. It’s more than just having a good time in the wilderness—it’s about education, communication, preparedness, leadership, and growing closer to God.

Zachary Carlstrom, who graduated from WCC in 2016, had a profound encounter with God during his 21-day freshman expedition, which is the College’s freshman orientation trip in the Wind River Mountains. Never in his wildest dreams did he think that, years later, he would be operating COR Expeditions (Catholic Outdoor Retreat), which is an outreach of WCC, alongside his wife Sarah, a 2014 graduate. Today, the two are using the education and formation they received at WCC to help others encounter God through nature.

COR “facilitates transformative encounters with Christ through what the wilderness has to offer,” according to the Carlstroms, and gives those who haven’t attended WCC a taste of the College’s outdoor program.

In 2012, a few ministry-focused organizations and seminaries started asking WCC to facilitate trips for them and their students, because they could see the benefits of outdoor education. “We wanted to offer outdoor education in an authentically Catholic way,” Zach explained, because many outdoor programs already in existence are either secular or Protestant.

“As we had more qualified staff from the student population to offer the trips,” he said, “we felt like there was a real need in the Church, and there wasn’t anyone doing that: authentic outdoor trips with professional guidance. We started to offer trips to more and more groups.”

Zach was COR’s first employee in2016. “From there, we’ve doubled the number of trips each year, aside from 2020 during coronavirus,” he said.

For a while, there was some question as to whether COR would stay connected with WCC. Now, it’s been decided that “WCC wants COR forever. We’ve officially been operating as an outreach of WCC since the beginning; we share a mission in the shared values of the Catholic faith through contact with God’s first book.” The benefit of partnering with WCC is that the groups share permits, which means that COR can offer trips in Wyoming, Colorado and Utah. They have also offered custom trips in California, Florida, Texas, Kentucky, Montana, and even abroad in New Zealand, Iceland and Scotland. Front-country leadership trainings are available across the United States.

“We’re bringing the liberal arts and holistic education to others through steeping people in wonder and helping them grow in their spiritual lives from that position of wonder,” Sarah said.

Zach added that COR focuses especially on two types of client. ”We want to help renew the faith of those who are already in the Church, such as religious orders like the CFRs or discipleship groups like FOCUS, and we see COR as a way to engage them more deeply.

“At the same time, we have a big heart for those who haven’t had contact with the Church, or maybe haven’t practiced in a while, and somehow they got onto one of our trips,” he said. “They experience the sacraments in a new way: we’ve had people make first confessions, Rosaries, Adoration. Our mission is unique because we can draw someone in who might not otherwise do a ‘faith based’ activity, but they get excited about a rock climbing, backpacking or rafting trip.”

Their impact so far has been impressive. They have worked with more than 2,500 college students, 350 FOCUS missionaries, 100 seminarians, 30 chaplains, 400 school students, 50 wounded veterans and 100 families. They have nine full-time missionaries who fundraise their salaries.

For both Zach and Sarah, their time at WCC had an undeniable influence on their development of COR. Sarah explained, “There’s the practical component that WCC provided us with our first formal training in the outdoors, beginning to develop those core skills in the outdoor program. I would also say that the opportunities at WCC to develop leadership and to have mentorship in leadership were helpful, such as for me, being a prefect, or for Zach, being involved with the parish’s youth group.”

“From the academic perspective,” she added, “when I graduated from WCC, I felt incredibly blessed with the education that I had received, especially in theology, philosophy and humanities, and because of the appreciation I had for it, it made me strongly desire to share it. When I graduated from the College, I was still among a small number of people who had received that education. There were so many who hadn’t received such an education, and this is why I wanted to work in ministry.”

For Zach, “COR would not have been possible without the mentorship and position that Dr. Zimmer [the College’s outdoor program coordinator] gave me, and the empowerment that the outdoor program gave me. My experiences in the outdoors here opened my eyes to wonder for the first time, and the idea that God can work through His First Book. I never thought that ministry could exist in outdoor programs, that it didn’t need four walls. God could encounter people individually in the wilderness.”

WCC has inspired the entire COR missionary team: “From the communication skills in rhetoric to the leadership from the outdoor program, it astounds me how well we work together as a team, in comparison to some other organizations I’ve worked with,” Zach said. “Some of the simple things we learned here are profoundly new ideas in other places.”

Sarah added, “WCC set an incredible example, especially in the founders, that we feel called by the Church to do this, and we’re going to make it happen, against all odds. That really inspired us. When God asks, we answer. We believe that He will provide.”

“A small group of people can change the world, our ideas matter, our thoughts matter, our passions matter,” Zach said. “The examples we had for those realities were really strong, simply by the College saying that our students will be the leaders of the Church.”

The Carlstroms hope that COR will continue to grow. “Coming to a college that was just getting its feet made starting a ministry not seem as daunting,” they said. “The pioneer spirit of WCC just carried forward in COR, and will only continue to do so.”

“The Church has long realized that art speaks to the human soul in a uniquely powerful way,” says Tara Stone, a graduate of John Paul the Great Catholic University in Escondido, Calif., who has launched an online film camp this summer for high school students that offers college credit through JPCatholic. She believes it’s important for young Catholics to be involved in the arts and create “well-crafted stories in film and television” that reflect “goodness, truth and beauty.”

The Newman Society recently asked Stone to share about her experience at Newman Guide recommended John Paul the Great Catholic University in Escondido, Calif., and about her offerings for high school students this summer, as a part of “Profiles in Faithful Catholic Education” series.

Newman Society: What was your experience like at John Paul the Great Catholic University, and how has it impacted your career and life?

Tara Stone: My experience as a student at John Paul the Great Catholic University was unique in a lot of ways. The university was still very small and very new when I was a student—I graduated with about 20 other students, and we were only the third class to graduate. My experience was also unique in that I was 23 years old when I started my freshman year. I had spent several years at a much larger, secular university and ultimately decided not to transfer any credits when I enrolled at JPCatholic. I wanted to begin with a clean slate.

Having taken other college courses, which shaped my expectations, I was admittedly impressed with the academic rigor of my JPCatholic courses—not so much because the content was difficult to grasp or the concepts particularly complex, but because the hands-on nature of filmmaking requires an enormous amount of time and effort and practice to learn and do well.

The three years of my undergrad were three of the busiest years of my life, and they prepared me well for working in the industry. My senior year was especially helpful in launching my career: I pitched the idea to my professors that instead of several small senior projects, our entire class could collaborate on a single feature film. My professors gave me the green light to write the script, and by the end of our senior year, we had shot the entire thing. Eventually, the film, Red Line, received distribution on DVD and VOD. Having that feature film credit on my resume has been invaluable, and I’ve been able to find work in the industry ever since.

Apart from the academic/professional impact, JPCatholic also shaped my faith journey in a really important way. I’m a cradle Catholic, and I was already serious about my faith when I started at JPCatholic—that was part of the reason I chose to go there and start over on my undergrad degree—but while I was a student there, I developed the habit of going to daily Mass and daily adoration. Those habits were integral to my vocational discernment. A few years after I graduated from JPCatholic, I became a consecrated virgin living in the world.

Newman Society: How did the “Story Masters Film Academy,” which you run with two JPCatholic faculty members, come about? Can you tell us about your film camp for high school students this summer?

Tara Stone: At the beginning of 2020, I was working for a video production company that mostly made multimedia programs for the Air Force, though we did make a handful of documentaries as well. When the COVID pandemic shut everything down in March of 2020, the company’s owner told us all to work from home for the next couple weeks. A couple weeks turned into several months. Meanwhile, all the projects we had been working on were cancelled mid-contract.

With the abundant free time I suddenly had, I decided to self-publish two of my screenplays in paperback and e-book format. Both scripts are period genre films that aren’t being made anymore, so I didn’t (and still don’t) think they would ever be produced. But they are good, fun stories that I wanted to share with the world. At some point, I realized there could be potential to sell them as educational tools to film instructors—they could be used to demonstrate script formatting and story structure, or they could be used to practice practical production skills like scheduling and budgeting.

I reached out to Christopher Riley, who taught my screenwriting classes and still teaches at JPCatholic. He agreed that my scripts could be valuable educational tools, but during the course of our conversation, he suggested that I could seize on an even bigger business opportunity—an opportunity to provide online screenwriting classes to high school students and use my scripts as course materials. Not only that, but Chris wanted to be my business partner and write the curriculum. Shortly after our initial conversation, we roped Nathan Scoggins in to add directing courses to our offerings. Like Chris, Nathan was one of my professors at JPCatholic and still teaches there. Since all three of us have a connection to JPCatholic, partnering with JPCatholic seemed like a natural fit. And so, Story Masters courses are eligible for college credit through JPCatholic.

This summer, we will have our very first Summer Film Camp and Festival for high school students. The summer camp runs from June 14 through July 23. Students will be challenged to write and direct a short film in five weeks, and their final films will be showcased in the film festival during the last week. It’s all online, as all our courses are, but each week begins and ends with a live Zoom session with me, Chris, and Nathan to guide students through their projects.

Newman Society: Why do you think it’s important for young creative Catholics to develop their artistic gifts? Why do you think it’s important for the Church to be involved in the arts?

Tara Stone: Art has always been an important part of the Church’s work of evangelization and catechesis. The Church has long realized that art speaks to the human soul in a uniquely powerful way.

Right now, film and television are being dominated by a culture that is deeply confused and, in many ways, morally depraved. And now, especially in the last year of being in various stages of lockdown, people are consuming unbelievable amounts of media. The human soul naturally craves goodness, truth, and beauty, which is why we are drawn to well-crafted stories in film and television. Unfortunately, much of what’s on offer today are merely counterfeits of goodness, truth, and beauty. If young Catholic artists don’t step up and create, the counterfeits will fill the void.

In my own life, I’ve often related my responsibility as a writer to the Parable of the Talents: God gave me some measure of talent as a writer, and I have an obligation to develop that gift and make it work for God’s Kingdom. Otherwise, I’m like the servant who buries his talent in the ground, and that servant’s story doesn’t end well. I would much rather hear at the end of my days, “Well done, good and faithful servant… enter into the joy of your master.”

Katelyn Stumler was exposed to beautiful and reverent liturgical music while a student at Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts in Warner, N.H., which is recommended in The Newman Guide. Now as the music director at a Catholic parish in Indiana, she shares this gift with parishioners—even throughout the COVID-19 shutdown.

The Newman Society recently asked Stumler to share about her experience at Magdalen College and how it prepared her for her work and ministry, as a part of “Profiles in Faithful Catholic Education” series.

Newman Society: What was your experience like at Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts, and how has it impacted your life?

Katelyn Stumler: I began my freshman year at Magdalen College in the fall of 2004 after 12 years of homeschooling. My older sister, Jolene (Walker) Nelson, was a current senior at Magdalen that year. We were no strangers to the school. My mom had some friends who had attended the college in the early years, and Jolene and I had both attended several of Magdalen’s summer youth programs as high schoolers.

My first memory of Magdalen College really expresses the overwhelming “theme” that I focus on when reflecting my experience there. My family decided to travel from where we lived in upstate New York and check out the campus one summer when we were visiting my aunt and uncle who lived in the Boston area. Upon our arrival, a current student working as a summer program counselor came to welcome us with a spirit of genuine Christian joy and hospitality. That spirit stuck with me. I wanted to be a part of that.

I loved the liberal arts education I received at Magdalen. The Great Books program opened me up to so many great philosophers and theologians, and the Socratic method dialogues that took place in many of my classes led me down a fresh new pathway of thinking in a way I never had before. I learned the goodness of searching, of asking questions, of coming to know myself and understand humanity more, even if, in the end, it left me with more questions than I started with. I find myself approaching professional development opportunities and information today with that same open and inquisitive mind that was cultivated at Magdalen.

I came away from my years at Magdalen with an enriched spiritual life. Celebrating daily Mass as a community, praying Compline each evening with the ladies in St. Mary’s Residence Hall, celebrating full and noble liturgies with beautiful music—all these elements made a big difference in my life and instilled spiritual habits that remain with me today. The Blessed Sacrament was reserved in the residence chapel, and I recall sensing great comfort knowing that Jesus was present in that place where I studied and slept.

The friendships I made at Magdalen were deep and lasting. Some of my dearest friends today are fellow Magdalen alumni. Even though I do not live near many of them, we stay connected across the miles. The community life at Magdalen fostered strong ties between people. The fact that we “did” all of life there together, from worshiping and singing to hiking mountains and cleaning bathrooms, cultivated these strong bonds. People cared about each other there and wanted to be present to each other, whether it was helping with an academic assignment or taking a walk to talk over a personal struggle. I learned what it means to be a good and genuine friend at Magdalen, and I hope I have taken these qualities and brought them to others that I have met since moving from upstate New York to southern Indiana in 2008.

While I was at Magdalen, I was blessed to study abroad in Italy the summer following my sophomore year. The time spent in Rome and Norcia, the birthplace of St. Benedict, was an incredible opportunity to study and experience the history of Christianity and western culture. I am very grateful to Magdalen for providing me with this opportunity. I have had the immense privilege of returning to Italy and traveling to the Holy Land with my husband, Craig, through pilgrimages organized by my parish.

Newman Society: How did your education at Magdalen College help prepare you for your work during the COVID-19 crisis?

Katelyn Stumler: I have worked as a full-time director of music at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church in New Albany, Ind., for the past 12 years. I had amazing opportunities at Magdalen to be involved in three different choirs (the main choir, performance choir and polyphony choir) that built upon my knowledge of music and singing for the liturgy.

When I was at Magdalen, the entire student body (probably around 75 students at the time I was a student) participated in the main choir, with a rotation system of who would sing at Sunday Mass so as to comfortably accommodate numbers in the choir loft at our college chapel. It was an incredible experience of unity for all of us, those who loved singing and those who didn’t, as the world of Catholic liturgical music was opened up to us: hymnody, Gregorian Chant (using the Graduale Romanum) and various choral works from different time periods. I dare say that by the time a student completed his or her four years at Magdalen, even those who may not have ever pictured themselves singing in a choir found that experience highly rewarding and life-changing.

During my sophomore year at Magdalen, I began occasionally accompanying one or more of the choirs on piano and organ, and my junior and senior year, I was the main accompanist for all the choirs for rehearsals, liturgies and performances. I had played for Masses and choir rehearsals at my parish church most of my teenage years prior to this, but at Magdalen, this skill was honed and shaped in ways that definitely prepared me to take on the role of music director for a parish of nearly 1,000 families.

Our parish began livestreaming Sunday Masses on the fourth Sunday of Lent, March 22, 2020, in response to the decision to suspend all public Masses in the Archdiocese of Indianapolis to slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus. At first, Masses took place with no music. But once we got to Holy Week, my pastor, with the approval of our archbishop, invited me to start adding music to the liturgies. Of course, all this had to be done in a way that could be captured on camera, which consisted of Father’s phone mounted on a simple tripod. We were not using microphones so as to cut down on the echo in the empty church, so singing while accompanying myself far away from the phone camera was not an option.

At this time, I turned to my experiences at Magdalen to enlighten my musical choices and decisions for Mass. I sang the Entrance Antiphon using the Simple English Propers, a project and book from Adam Bartlett, sponsored by the Church Music Association of America. I was introduced to this resource after my Magdalen years, but my knowledge of chant from the Graduale Romanum made very familiar and comfortable with the chant notation. I used the St. Meinrad psalm tones to chant the responsorial psalm and Communion antiphon for these Masses. I was first introduced to these psalm tones at Magdalen as well and use them on a regular basis for all parish liturgies, even before we were livestreaming due to COVID-19. Throughout the Sacred Paschal Triduum, I found myself drawing back upon my music experiences during those three holy days at Magdalen, as the custom at the college was to observe Holy Week and Easter on campus. On Easter morning, it gave me great joy to chant the Victimae Paschali Laudes sequence, a chant that I also learned while at Magdalen and continue to use, normally with my parish choirs, but on my own during livestreaming.

I also have my education at Magdalen to thank for my first introduction to the liturgical documents of the Church, which also proved most valuable during this COVID-19 crisis. I am a member of the Music Commission for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis. When those of us on the commission found ourselves having to think “outside of the box” for ways to continue the work of our ministries, we decided to produce a series of videos for our fellow music directors on everything from cantor preparation and surviving as a liturgical minister during the pandemic to accompaniment techniques and an introduction to the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM). I took on the challenge of presenting on the GIRM, once again drawing on my education from Magdalen, even consulting notes in the margins that I took during classes nearly 15 years ago.

On a slightly humorous note, I can say that my Magdalen college experience in effective dialogue and conversation have helped me navigate the plethora of Zoom meetings of which I was a part during the shutdown!

Newman Society: Why do you think beautiful and reverent music is important? How did you try to educate parishioners about liturgical music during COVID-19?

Katelyn Stumler: The Catechism of the Catholic Church (which I also studied from cover to cover at Magdalen) states that the Eucharist is the “source and summit of the Christian life” (quoting Lumen Gentium, one of the Vatican II documents). The liturgy deserves beautiful and reverent music. Music naturally makes a lasting impression on people. There is a saying that what people remember most about coming to Mass is the homily and the music, and while that is somewhat comical, it does impress upon me that music choices for the liturgy need to be made intentionally and mindfully. My experiences with beautiful and reverent music at Magdalen equipped me to step into my role as director of music at my parish.

During these times, I have tried to bring beautiful and reverent music to our parishioners through what I am able to do at our livestreamed Masses. I have shared past recordings of our choirs with our parishioners through Facebook and Flocknote, a great parish communication tool. Another parish musician and I have worked together to create weekly YouTube playlists of hymns and songs appropriate for each Sunday to share with parishioners, incorporating some of the music our choirs would have sung if we had been able to celebrate Mass together in a public setting. I have encouraged our other parish accompanists and musicians to record themselves singing or playing their instrument at home so we can share these offerings on social media. I have even done some experimentation on singing apps that create multi-frame collage videos of several people singing. Since the choirs have not been able to gather or sing together, I have spent some time reaching out pastorally to our parish choir members and musicians through emails, text messages and phone calls.

During all the challenges, disappointments and tragedies of this pandemic, it has been such a blessing to reflect upon my Catholic college experiences that have helped me respond in the best possible way as a parish director of music.