Pastor’s Corner — October 12th, 2025
Parish Raffle and Oktoberfest!
Thanks to everyone who came to the Oktoberfest this year! Based on how much food was eaten, we can estimate that we had about 1,000 people come to the festival. Our raffle was a smashing success as we had around $95k revenue. This is the highest we’ve had since I’ve been Pastor here! Thanks for your generosity!
I was so grateful to see so many people at the festival. If it wasn’t for double booking this event with the long school weekend and a home Lions game that we double booked, we probably would have many more people there.
Special thanks to Frank Law and the St Pat’s School Dad’s Club and Larry Bacon and Knights of Columbus for all of their help in making this event so successful.
Deacons of the Archdiocese of Detroit
Next week Friday and Saturday (Oct 18-19) I’ll be up north giving a few talks at the Deacon Convocation of the Archdiocese of Detroit. I think Deacon Dave Carignan gave them my name. Either way, please pray for me as I preach to them and their wives. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to tell them that our Diocese is better than theirs because they took Deacon Dave back from us. (just kidding!)
Women Are Not Defective Men and A Proposed Feminist Manifesto
Decades out from its inception, our culture is still reeling from the fallout of the sexual revolution, the heart of which was an attempt to divide what God put together: sex and babies, marriage and children. No matter how you slice it, every single one of us has been negatively impacted by the terrible ideas behind this revolution (ideas used to justify all kinds of sin) and the real misery left in its wake. Bad ideas have bad consequences and it doesn’t take a genius to see that the contraceptive mentality towards sex—the revolution’s lynchpin—has contributed to shattered marriages and lives and has fueled widespread pornography and sexual addiction, which fuels self-centeredness in sex. All of this inexorably leads to demand for abortion, which “has” to be available when contraception fails or isn’t used, which is a rotten fruit of the revolution. The untold suffering caused by the sexual revolution is hard to exaggerate.
Notwithstanding our call to preach of the mercy of God who makes all things new, I believe that naming these effects of the revolution is critical if we are to heal from it. While most Catholics wouldn’t be able to name the ungodly concoction of bad ideas that precipitated and still perpetuates the ideas of the sexual revolution, I am thankful that there have been many Catholics that are. In fact, the past couple of decades articulate Catholic women have been writing and helping us see why the sexual revolution is rooted in bad ideas about human nature and men and women in particular.
With many books out there, here are some of the more readable recent ones:
1) Jennifer Robeck Morse, The Sexual State: How Elite Ideologies Are Destroying Lives and Why the Church Was Right All Along
2) Mary Eberstadt, Adam and Eve After the Pill, Revisited
3) Carrie Gress, Anti-Mary Exposed: Rescuing the Culture from Toxic Femininity
4) Leah Libresco Sargeant: The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto
Of the last book (#4) by Catholic convert Leah Libresco Sargeant, which just came out this month, Catholic author Nathaniel Blake, a Fellow at the Public Policy Center in Washington DC wrote this review: “Women are Not Defective Men, No Matter What Feminists Tell You” I haven’t read the book, but this review is excellent and outlines why the book is so important today.
Healing starts when we can properly diagnose the cause of the wound, and a key part of this wounding in our culture is how it poorly thinks about sexuality and what it means to be human. Our Christian faith with its robust and holistic view of the human person, is key for healing our culture from the fallout of one of the worst crises we’ve seen in Western Civilization.
“Food is Communion” Seminar by Deacon Peter on Saturday Oct 25th
This is a “Save the Date” for Deacon Peter’s Master’s Integrating Seminar at St Pat’s. Each year the Deacon seminarians have to do a presentation on a topic at the parish that integrates with their formation. Last year Deacon Josh did his on breaking sinful habits and the year before Deacon Joshua Fons did it on Vatican II. Deacon Peter’s topic is going to be about food…and how fitting that is since he’s an incredible cook!
Your servant in the Lord,
Fr. Mathias