Pastoral Plan

Call to Pastoral Planning
The second mandate comes directly from the Holy Father. Pope John Paul II has called for us to “put out into the deep.” His call is for the Church to become holy and for all of its members to be sanctified on our pilgrimage toward Heaven by really emphasizing the priorities that will lead us to the Kingdom of God. “Putting out into the deep” means that we are deepening our walk with Christ, that we are stepping out into new areas that we have never been before. We do this so that we can accomplish the overall mandate from Christ – to go out and teach all nations and baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Our Holy Father has specifically set forth the challenge, before the local churches to embody this mandate of Jesus. In Novo Millenio Ineunte, the Pope writes,
“ Now is the time for each local Church to assess its fervor and find fresh enthusiasm for its spiritual and pastoral responsibilities, by reflecting on what the Spirit of God has been saying to the People of God in this special year of grace…so that the Church may shine ever more brightly in the variety of her gifts and in unity, as she journeys on.”
Areas of concentrated focus
While each of the areas outlined are necessary to support and strengthen the pastoral health of the Diocese, we intend to promote three areas of concentrated focus over the next five years. They include:
– To support and develop vocations, especially to the priesthood, and to ensure that we have enough resources to fund seminarian education
– To strengthen the family and to work to reduce the rate of separation and divorce among Catholic families
– To strengthen religious education and to strengthen Catholic schools, within the Diocese

Areas of developing focus
We also intend to promote two additional areas of developing focus, over the next five years. They include:
– To improve our understanding of and live the social teachings of the Church, including beginning a diocesan ministry of social justice
– To foster faith-based relationships and to provide practical assistance to help Catholics evangelize

Goals and Strategies
The following information is organized into five goal statements and 34 accompanying strategies that we intend to pursue to accomplish the overall goals. Our next steps will be outline action plans or plans of implementation at both the Diocesan and parish levels. These action plans will include assigned responsibilities, specific time lines, and an identification of the resources necessary to carry out the plan.

Bishop's Letter

February 11, 2003

My dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

 In his pastoral letter on “The Coming of the New Millennium,” His Holiness Pope John Paul II called the entire Church to a new beginning, a new “springtime of evangelization.” He did so by calling the entire Church to “put out into the deep,” the unknown, uncharted territories of life and faith, and to cast our nets into the deep for a huge catch. In order to do this, he called upon each diocese to engage in pastoral planning. He insisted, in that letter, that the only way to move the Church into the deep waters of faith and possibility is to increase our desire and our pursuit of holiness and sanctity.

In response to the Holy Father’s initiative, in October of 2001, I composed a
committee of 16 members to develop several goals that would assist the Diocese of Cheyenne to “put out into the deep” at the beginning of this new millennium and this new century. The Committee presented an initial draft of a pastoral plan to me in July, 2002. Their work, which spanned well over a year, is a great contribution to the development of this pastoral plan. Many of you wrote to me, in response to the draft. I have read each and every one of your responses and am grateful to you for your valuable input.

This plan will be in effect from 2003 to 2008 and will serve as my compass in guiding and directing the activities of the Diocese for the next five years. Certainly not all of this plan will be accomplished in the first two or three years, but by the year 2008 we should have made significant progress toward accomplishing the goals outlined here. A business and action plan will be developed for each goal for the five year time span.

As the Holy Father so wisely pointed out, none of this will be accomplished without a deeper immersion in the prayer life of all the faithful. Our “Year of Study and Prayer on Marriage and Family Life” was the first step in this direction and this initiative will be continued and deepened. Our retreats, days of recollection, and institutes for priests and others have been more focused and intense in order to move us to a greater understanding and yearning for prayer. I echo the call of the Holy Father and the call to myself and to all of our priests and deacons to a more faithful and committed pursuit of holiness in our lives and ministry. I ask each parish to begin praying for the sanctification of your pastor, your bishop, and all priests of the Diocese.

We must increase our efforts in praying for and encouraging vocations to the priesthood and religious life. We must also ensure adequate financial resources to provide young men the opportunity to attend the seminary, if they are called.

I beg married couples and families to stem the long tide of separation and divorce which weakens us as a family of faith. Every marriage and every family is important to the Church. You and I must turn this around and will do so only by hard work and intense prayer.

With regard to Catholic education, we must reorient our catechetical efforts to assist our young people in having a basic mastery of the faith by the time they are seniors in high school. We need to strengthen our Catholic schools, helping them to reclaim a strong Catholic identity and to achieve academic excellence. We will also need to look into the possibility of expanding the number of our schools where there is true need, support, and viability. We will offer educational and formational opportunities to our adults of all ages in order to expand their knowledge, understanding, and experience of the faith.

We will begin to lay a foundation for an approach to social justice, in our Diocese, by first deepening our understanding of the teaching of the Catholic Church. To further this effort, we will begin an approach to social justice ministry which will embody this teaching.

As a Church, we need to reach out to those who have been estranged from us. We must welcome them to return to the flock and encourage them to become active and dynamic participants in their faith through regular attendance at Sunday Mass and active pursuit of holiness. We hope to provide our people with training and background to evangelize and invite others to come to our Church for the first time and to find ways to make our parishes truly welcoming communities.

Some of the goals and strategies, in our pastoral plan, are underway. All of them need much work and many resources. Some of the strategies outlined are brand new for the Diocese. They will need to be given birth and to become part of our regular outreach. There is so much good already happening in the Diocese. This pastoral plan is an effort to focus our attention over the next five years and to direct our energies into these areas. We will certainly not achieve perfection, as these are ongoing needs of the Church. However, with focus and attention, we will strengthen our presence as a faith community in Wyoming.

With the goals listed an the previous page, the Catholic Church in Wyoming will be able to further stabilize and strengthen herself. We are building on the shoulders of our ancestors, our parents, grandparents, and extended families, in order to advance to greater health and growth in the Church. What has been passed down to us, we have a responsibility to improve and pass on to the next generations. This “passing on” is what the Church calls “tradition” and making improvement in what we have been given is called the practice of “stewardship.” Stewardship is not a fundraising technique, although it does call for sharing our financial resources. Stewardship is an attitude toward life and a way of living.

A good steward is someone who takes the gifts he or she has been given – gifts of time, talent, and treasure – and begins to invest them in God’s interests and in the lives of others. Whether we share our time, our talent, or our treasure, we are doing so with an eye to returning to God and his interests something of what He has given to us as an expression of our gratitude for all of our blessings. God loves a cheerful giver and rewards our giving by blessing us, even more, in countless ways.

I encourage you to become involved or to continue your efforts in support of this pastoral plan. Each individual is important to its realization. I ask God’s blessing upon each and every one of you. May the Lord increase our hunger and desire for holiness as we, together, “put out into the deep.”

With the next five years, I hope the Diocese of Cheyenne, its parishes, missions, priests, and people develop a stewardship mentality and strong habits of offering their services of time, talents, and financial resources to accomplish the mission of the Church and meet the considerable needs and challenges in the present and the future. In 2004, we will begin another “Year of Study and Prayer” on the theme of Stewardship. Hopefully, the noble practice of the spirituality of stewardship will be integrated into our way of life as individuals and into the fabric of every parish and in the Diocese. “To those to whom much has been given, much will be expected.”

The goal areas for this new pastoral plan, should serve as the basis for much of our work for many years into the future. However, if we work together as one Church, with one common vision, we can accomplish these goals and enrich our Church both now and for many, many years to come. May God bless you and may God who has begun this good work in us bring it to completion.

Sincerely yours in Christ,
The Most Reverend David L. Ricken, DD, JCL
Bishop of Cheyenne

To learn more:
Director of Stewardship
Deacon Doug Vlchek
email: dvlchek@dioceseofcheyenne.org