by Stefani Manowski
July 11, 2011

 

Father Frank DeSiano, CSP, lives with a big frustration.

“There doesn’t seem to be a big mission or importance in wanting to share our Catholic faith with people who are not Catholic or who are inactive Catholics,” he explained.

Father DeSiano hopes to aid in the remedy with his tenth book, Mission America: Challenges and Opportunities for Catholics Today. The 110-page book is the result of a collaboration between Father DeSiano, president of Paulist Evangelization Ministries, and Paulist Press. The book’s six chapters discuss conversion, conversion in American society, why Catholics need to reach out and share their faith, Catholic parishes in American culture, a look at a future church in a future world and an agenda for today’s American parish.

The appendix engages readers in a New Testament spirituality for mission, and reflection questions throughout the book further enhance the readers’ – mainly pastors and parish leaders – experience by encouraging personal reflection, challenge, and thinking about the concepts presented in terms of their own parish.

The book intends to “define what mission looks like today,” according to Father DeSiano, “what mission means in an ecumenical context, what it means in terms of a larger secular context.”

Father DeSiano is a veteran in evangelization ministry, which began after his priestly ordination in 1972. His first assignment was at St. Philip Neri Church in Portland, Ore., where he developed favorably received courses on Catholicism. His first book, “Searching for Sense” came out of this experience. During these years in Oregon he received over 60 people into the Catholic Church.

He returned to his home parish of the Church of St. Paul the Apostle St. Paul in Manhattan to serve as pastor and to begin welding together the ideas of “missionary” and “parish.” While at the Paulist Mother church he authored ““Presenting the Catholic Faith.” These notions of parish and mission further developed during an educational sabbatical at Boston University, where he wrote a D. Min. thesis on parish-based evangelization. Father DeSiano then spent six years in Washington, D.C., helping to form parish evangelization teams, developing evangelization strategies, serving as a consultor on evangelization to the U.S. Bishops, and helping to write “Go and Make Disciples – A Plan and Strategy for Evangelization in the United States.” It was work that was “both the flowering of earlier seeds and also seedlings for future ministry,” he said.

Elected president of the Paulist Fathers in 1992, Father DeSiano continued to speak on evangelization during his term, and also conducted parish missions and offered presentations for dioceses, parishes and other organizations. He continued to write, and authored “Yes, I Can Believe,” “Creating the Evangelizing Parish,” “The Evangelizing Catholic,” “Discovering My Experience of God” and “The 7 Commandments of Discipleship.”

The year 2002 saw Father DeSiano return to parish life as pastor of Old St. Mary’s Church in Chicago. It was there he developed the Chicago Institute of Evangelization in concert with the evangelization committee of the Archdiocese of Chicago. His experiences in Chicago led to the development of “Awakening Faith: Reconnecting to Your Catholic Faith,” a widely-used program to help Catholics return to the practice of their faith. He was recalled to a leadership position in the Paulist community, and served as first consultor from 2006-2010.

He now serves as president of Paulist Evangelization Ministries based in Washington, D.C., which seeks to “reach the unreached in faith,” with a particular emphasis on those who do not have an active faith life. In this position, he developed “Seeking Christ: First Steps Toward Catholic Faith,” to help parishes welcome inquirers at any time of the year.

When it comes to reaching the unchurched or fallen-away, the bottom line, Father DeSiano said, is that Catholics need to “believe we have an important, compelling, and essential message. The Church gives people the opportunity to find community and find meaning in their lives.”

Mission America: Challenges and Opportunities for Catholics Today (Paulist Press, $12.95) is available at paulistpress.com, pemdc.org or by calling 202-832-5022.