16245 N. 60th St, Scottsdale, AZ 85254

Building on Our Legacy of Faith

We asked our Campaign leadership to reflect on why they are volunteering and supporting our capital campaign. Honorary Chairs, George and Jeanie Hays, wrote this stirring testimonial:

Jeanie and I joined St. Bernadette in 1997 when Mass was celebrated at Desert Shadows Middle School. We were attracted to the energy and friendliness of the parish and got involved in a small church community and various ministries. We were very happy when the social hall was built and viewed it as a positive step toward the building of our permanent church. We focused on getting our kids into Pope John XXIII School and developing a network of friends. Fast forward 15 years…we are still celebrating Mass in the social hall.

Now, as our kids are growing and our friendships are established, the growth of our spiritual life has become more important to us. We have become increasingly frustrated with going to Mass in a cafeteria and with the lack of reverence displayed by the parishioners (sadly, this includes us). Jeanie and I have had many discussions about our faith life and our desire for deeper spirituality. In looking to satisfy this need, we have attended Mass at other churches looking for a solution, but these parishes are not our home. We want a parish that integrates all aspects of our faith life, from being spiritual pilgrims as individuals and as a married couple raising faith-filled Catholic children.

When the results of the feasibility study were announced, the level of support surprised us. We were not sure that we would actively participate in the building project. And yet, after we discussed our participation in the capital campaign and prayed about it, we both came to the decision to invest ourselves fully in building a new church. We are excited to help create a legacy of faith for our family and parish community.

We are enthusiastic about the design of the new church, which reflects the timeless values of our Catholic faith as expressed in the liturgy and the sacraments. Our new church will provide a place of reverence and serenity for all of us and help each of us on our spiritual journey. The students at our parish school will also greatly benefit by having a cafeteria and social hall for meals and other school activities. Perhaps most importantly, this building project will give us the opportunity to reignite our faith and rebuild our community.

We are committed to building a church and welcoming new members to the community of St. Bernadette. We look forward to celebrating Mass in a church that reflects the glory of God and the wonder of the Sacraments.

We hope you will join us in this worthy project.

Please join us in prayer:

Loving God, Father of all, we ask your help today in directing our efforts as we strive toward our capital goal. As You have so often been our strength in the past, now we ask You to secure our future, that we will be able to continue serving your people at St. Bernadette’s. Please give us generous and caring hearts. Grant us the courage to make the sacrifice necessary to open the window to the future. And shelter us from sin, that we might accomplish your eternal will. We ask this through Our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever.

Amen.

Building on Our Legacy of Faith

We asked our Campaign leadership to reflect on why they are volunteering and supporting our capital campaign. Our third General Chair couple, Erik and Sarah Larson, provided this testimonial:

In our lives there are three pillars – family, faith and education. As the parents of three young children, these pillars support our past decisions, our current actions and our future hopes. We are thankful to have our oldest child as a student at Blessed Pope John XXIII Catholic School. The combination of faith and education is priceless. As members of St. Bernadette we are looking forward to watching our family grow, and grow in a truly magnificent Church.

Growing up, we were lucky enough to have parents who sent us to Catholic schools. Most parishes, large and small, consisted of both a church and a school. We took for granted the single, united community. We want to give that same experience to our children: a place for worship at weekly Mass with classmates and weekend Mass with families, a place for sacraments and a place for memories. We want for our children, to not only have the community to share this with, but the church building to create those memories.

Where we currently stand, we are looking forward to the next 12 years of driving to 60th Street and Bell Road until our youngest child attends his Baccalaureate Mass at St. Bernadette Church – not St. Bernadette Hall. In building of a church, we want to see that hall used for great things: a hall for meetings to help the parish and the community, a hall used by the children of the school. This can be more classrooms, enrichments, or a cafeteria so they can avoid eating lunch in the hot weather.

The family is there – our young, immediate family and our expanding St. Bernadette family. The faith is there. The education is there. We want our children to have that church building to symbolize those pillars under one special roof.

Please join us in prayer:

Loving God, Father of all, we ask your help today in directing our efforts as we strive toward our capital goal. As You have so often been our strength in the past, now we ask You to secure our future, that we will be able to continue serving your people at St. Bernadette’s. Please give us generous and caring hearts. Grant us the courage to make the sacrifice necessary to open the window to the future. And shelter us from sin, that we might accomplish your eternal will. We ask this through Our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever.

Amen.

Building on Our Legacy of Faith

We asked our Campaign leadership to reflect on why they are volunteering and supporting our capital campaign. Another of our General Chair couples, Michael and Gina Cordier, provided this testimonial:

Our family first became members of St. Bernadette Parish while we still celebrated mass at the local middle school and we had two small children in tow. Now those two small children are 19 and 15, and St. Bernadette has become more than just where we attend Mass, but it is the place where our children have grown up, attended school, and received their sacraments. The community of St. Bernadette, and all the wonderful people who are its parishioners, are family to us. While we certainly live close enough to other parishes to attend there if we so chose, St. Bernadette is our spiritual home, it is where we not just choose to attend Mass, but where we want to continue to grow closer to God, His Church, and this community. No other place is home for us.

Ever since St. Bernadette first moved into the parish hall, it has always been the temporary worship space while we waited for the right time to be able to begin the process of building a permanent sanctuary, a true worship space that is worthy of being called the house of God and where each member of St. Bernadette can go to worship, pray, or just quietly reflect. The time is now for this community to actively take the steps necessary to build our permanent sanctuary. We need a place where our children will want to be married, where they will want to baptize and raise their children in and continue to be a part of the community we all have come to love at St. Bernadette.

As alumni parents of Blessed Pope John XXIII, we know how important building this church will be and the tremendous impact it will have on our school children. While we were very happy with our children’s experience at Blessed Pope John, the building of the new church building will mean our school children will finally get the opportunity for several important things they currently do without: a dedicated worship space for school mass; a larger and more useable space for adoration; more space for school classes and events; and last but not least, finally the opportunity to eat lunch in a proper cafeteria instead of eating outside in the heat or being forced to remain in their classrooms for lunch due to inclement weather.

We are fully committed to the sacrifices it will take to make the dream of this community for a permanent church a reality. The time is now and we ask all of you to join us in support of this campaign.

Thank you and we pray God blesses us in this important work.

Please join us in prayer:

Loving God, Father of all, we ask your help today in directing our efforts as we strive toward our capital goal. As You have so often been our strength in the past, now we ask You to secure our future, that we will be able to continue serving your people at St. Bernadette’s. Please give us generous and caring hearts. Grant us the courage to make the sacrifice necessary to open the window to the future. And shelter us from sin, that we might accomplish your eternal will. We ask this through Our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.

Building on Our Legacy of Faith

We asked our Campaign leadership to reflect on why they are volunteering and supporting our capital campaign. One of our General Chair couples, Bill and Carol Leicht, provided this testimonial:

We are charter members of St. Bernadette’s and have always been involved in many of the Parish’s ministries and social activities. We supported the construction of the current community center and administration buildings and are now very anxious to finally be able to support our new permanent church. The decision to build a church is not a hasty one. We, the people have been looking forward to this event for many years. Worshipping in the community center has served us well for many years, but we all realize that the time has come to have our own permanent church.

We are extremely pleased to see that our founding pastor, Fr. Richard Felt, has offered his support and blessings for our success in this endeavor. It was with his guidance that we grew into a flourishing parish and were able to construct our current community center and administration buildings.

The people of St. Bernadette’s are very special to us and we feel very blessed to a part of this parish. We know that many of our friends and other parishioners have left St. Bernadette’s for various reasons, some because of the delay in building a church. We are certainly hoping many of those will return to re-establish the enthusiasm, involvement and dedication we all experienced in the past. We would not only welcome them back to share our worship experiences in our new building, but would also welcome them back to the stewardship, leadership, and financial support they once provided.

We look forward to being part of this process in these next few years and to finally have a St. Bernadette’s church building to worship our God and to serve the religious needs of our wonderful parish.

Please join us in prayer:

Loving God, Father of all, we ask your help today in directing our efforts as we strive toward our capital goal. As You have so often been our strength in the past, now we ask You to secure our future, that we will be able to continue serving your people at St. Bernadette’s. Please give us generous and caring hearts. Grant us the courage to make the sacrifice necessary to open the window to the future. And shelter us from sin, that we might accomplish your eternal will. We ask this through Our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.

Building on Our Legacy of Faith

We are pleased to announce the General Chairs of the Building on Our Legacy of Faith Campaign:

Michael and Gina Cordier

Erik and Sarah Larson

Bill and Carol Leicht

The lifeblood of any campaign is the volunteer force.  We are so grateful to the Cordiers, Larsons and Leichts for their willingness to serve the parish.  We are also grateful to these volunteers who have agreed to serve on the Major Gifts Committee:

Michael and Nancy Dougherty

Pat and Lynn Hoernig

Shane and Rebecca Marquis

Jerry and Dianne McMahon

David and Lisa Osselaer

Pat and Jennifer Porter

Tom and Amy Putz

John Smith

Rick and Annette Toerne

Tim and Lynda White

Recruiting continues for the Public (Church and School) Gifts Committee, Special Events Committee and the Prayer Committee.  Watch for the announcement of these volunteers next week!

As we look forward to our permanent church building, reflect on these words from the Rites of Dedication of a Church:

A Church is the place where the Christian community is gathered to hear the Word of God, to offer prayers of intercession and praise to God, and above all to celebrate the Holy Mysteries; and it is the place where the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist is kept.  Thus it stands as a special kind of image of the Church itself, which is God’s temple built from living stones.

Please join us in prayer:

Loving God, Father of all, we ask your help today in directing our efforts as we strive toward our capital goal.  As You have so often been our strength in the past, now we ask You to secure our future, that we will be able to continue serving your people at St. Bernadette’s. Please give us generous and caring hearts.  Grant us the courage to make the sacrifice necessary to open the window to the future.  And shelter us from sin, that we might accomplish your eternal will. We ask this through Our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever.  Amen.

Building on Our Legacy of Faith

We are pleased to announce the Honorary Chairs of the Building on Our Legacy of Faith Campaign:

Alan and Paula Sears and George and Jeanie Hays.  The Sears are founding parishioners of St. Bernadette’s.  Longtime parishioners, the Hays are also school parents.  We are most grateful for their

involvement and support.

All parishioners and school families have received the informational brochure featuring the most frequently asked questions from the Feasibility Study.  Campaign planning and preparation continue at a rapid pace, including recruiting of other leadership and producing campaign materials.

The new church building will feature a bell tower.  The following are excerpts from an article by Michael Rose, author of Ugly as Sin: Why They Changed our Churches from Sacred Spaces to Meeting Spaces and How We Can Change Them Back Again.

A church should not only be seen, but heard.  Through the use of bells the faithful are reminded of Christ’s presence.  The first use of church bells was to announce the time of church services, most notably the Mass on Sundays and Holy Days.  Later they were used also during Mass, being rung at the elevation of the Host during Consecration.  Beginning in the Middle Ages differences in the manner of ringing the bells or in how many bells were used indicated the type of liturgical service.  All tolls and peals of the church bells, no matter what the occasion or time of day, are a summons to prayer or a call to worship.

The bell tower is one of the primary vertical elements that draws the pilgrim to the church, not only by the sound of its bells but by its visual profile.  Pointing upward to the heavens, it is a welcoming sign to pilgrims and tourists, parishioners and merchants alike.  Most Catholics can recognize instinctively that the peal of the bells and the visual profile of a bell tower add to the unique appeal that Catholic churches have to announce the presence of Christ and His Church in the world.

-Adoremus Bulletin

www.adoremus.org

Join us in our Campaign Prayer as we complete preparations for our project:

Loving God, Father of all, we ask your help today in directing our efforts as we strive toward our capital goal.  As You have so often been our strength in the past, now we ask You to secure our future, that we will be able to continue serving your people at St. Bernadette’s. Please give us generous and caring hearts.  Grant us the courage to make the sacrifice necessary to open the window to the future.  And shelter us from sin, that we might accomplish your eternal will. We ask this through Our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever.  Amen.

Building on Our Legacy of Faith

The campaign committee continues to recruit leadership for the various sections and to prepare materials for the project.  An informational brochure featuring answers to frequently asked questions from the feasibility study is in the mail to all parishioners and school families.

Below is the final installment in a series featuring frequently asked questions on sacred architecture and answers by Denis McNamara, Ph.D., an architectural historian specializing in American church architecture.   Dr. McNamara is the assistant director at the Liturgical Institute of the University of Saint Mary of the Lake/Mudelein Seminary, and serves as a liturgical design consultant.

Question:  Why were so many “modern” churches built after the Second Vatican Council?  Why were interiors of churches changed by taking out high altars, painting over murals, etc.?

Answer:  In the elite circles of architectural philosophy and practice, the machine and the factory (and their materials of glass, steel and concrete) became the model for new buildings.  Only later did people start to see that some of the principles of modernism needed to be rethought for ecclesiastical use.  We are now living in the postmodern time when many churches are re-engaging with beauty and tradition once again.

After the Second Vatican Council, a strain of theology emerged in the Church, which redefined churches as meeting-houses and found its inspiration in the so-called house churches of the time of the apostles.  This is no longer the prevailing notion of church architecture.  In fact, the Catechism of the Catholic Church specifically states the churches “are not simply gathering places, but signify and make visible the Church living in this place, the dwelling of God with men reconciled and united with Christ.”  In other words, a church is an image that shows the realities of the heavenly future when God’s reconciliation with humanity is complete.

In the late 1960’s and forward, many people who accepted this redefinition of the church as a meeting-house for the community’s sacred meal then saw old altars, altarpieces, statues and murals as relics of the “old” way of understanding the Church.  They removed and destroyed many precious artifacts.  People are learning to see the value of many traditional forms in the Church once again.

-Adoremus Bulletin

www.adoremus.org

Join us in our Campaign Prayer as we complete preparations for our project:

Loving God, Father of all, we ask your help today in directing our efforts as we strive toward our capital goal.  As You have so often been our strength in the past, now we ask You to secure our future, that we will be able to continue serving your people at St. Bernadette’s. Please give us generous and caring hearts.  Grant us the courage to make the sacrifice necessary to open the window to the future.  And shelter us from sin, that we might accomplish your eternal will. We ask this through Our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever.  Amen.

Building on Our Legacy of Faith

Preparations for our capital campaign continue with planning and leadership recruitment.  In the next couple of weeks, watch for an informational brochure that addresses several frequently asked questions that arose during our campaign feasibility study.

Also in the next few weeks, we are featuring frequently asked questions on sacred architecture and answers by Denis McNamara, Ph.D., an architectural historian specializing in American church architecture.   Dr. McNamara is the assistant director at the Liturgical Institute of the University of Saint Mary of the Lake/Mudelein Seminary, and serves as a liturgical design consultant.

Question:  Since the people are the “living stones” of the Church, why do we need anything other than a simple meeting hall for Mass?

Answer:  The people are indeed the “living stones” of the earthly Church.  However, the documents of the Second Vatican Council remind us that the Sacred Liturgy is an exercise of the priestly office of Jesus Christ, head and members, where we “take part in a foretaste of that heavenly liturgy which is celebrated in the holy city of Jerusalem toward which we journey as pilgrims, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God, a minister of the holies and of the true tabernacle; we sing a hymn to the Lord’s glory with all the warriors of the heavenly army.”  A church building, therefore, aids in our full, conscious and active participation by showing us by way of foretaste the very realities in which we are participating.  The church building not only shows us our earthly reality, but allows us to glimpse the realities of our destiny at the end of time when God has completely restored the world.

Question:  Didn’t the early Christians worship in simple private homes?  Why, then, should we build elaborate public buildings?

Answer:  Though scriptural evidence speaks of the earliest Christians “breaking bread” in their homes, it also speaks of them returning frequently to the temple for prayer.  A number of the important discourses and cures in the Acts of the Apostles happen within the temple courts.  Christ and his apostles walked on the temple mount amid Corinthian columns, classic moldings, and a large basilican hall.  A church building is not primarily a house, but rather a ritually public and sacramental building where many gather to anticipate the glory and perfection of heaven.

-Adoremus Bulletin

www.adoremus.org

Building on Our Legacy of Faith

Preparations for our capital campaign continue with planning and leadership recruitment.  To guide us through the entire process, we ask that all parishioners join in our campaign prayer:

Loving God, Father of all, we ask your help today in directing our efforts as we strive toward our capital goal.  As You have so often been our strength in the past, now we ask You to secure our future, that we will be able to continue serving your people at St. Bernadette’s. Please give us generous and caring hearts.  Grant us the courage to make the sacrifice necessary to open the window to the future.  And shelter us from sin, that we might accomplish your eternal will. We ask this through Our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever.  Amen.

In the next few weeks, we are also featuring frequently asked questions on sacred architecture and answers by Denis McNamara, Ph.D., an architectural historian specializing in American church architecture.   Dr. McNamara is the assistant director at the Liturgical Institute of the University of Saint Mary of the Lake/Mudelein Seminary, and serves as a liturgical design consultant.

Question:  Is it possible to build traditional churches today?

Answer:  Since the advent of postmodernism in the 1960’s, the architecture world has been re-examining the place of traditional forms for new work.  A large and flourishing movement, generally known as New Classicism, has been operating for more than two decades.  In recent years, designs for new traditional Catholic churches have been appearing with greater frequency.  Traditional architecture need not be more expensive than other quality ways of building.  Cutting-edge modernism is extraordinarily expensive because of its demands for custom materials.  Traditional architecture can be elevated with more elaborate designs and richer materials, or it can be reduced with simpler designs and materials, which nonetheless partake of legitimate traditional design.

Question:  Isn’t using traditional styles for architecture just copying the past?

Answer:  There is always room for development in Catholic architecture just as there is always room for development of doctrine as we come to understand better the revelation of Christ.  But simply absorbing current trends in theology is not an answer; they must be tested against the inherited teaching of the church.  The same is true in architecture.  The Church welcomes new technologies and styles of the current day, provided they bring due honor and reverence to the rites.  Using new artistic and architectural conventions simply because they are new does not always engage a proper level of theological inquiry.  Similarly, using old forms just to be antiquarian is not adequate either.  New traditional architecture should never be an exact copy of an old building.  The past serves as a treasury from which to draw, and we should not be afraid either to depart from it where necessary or use it quite faithfully when appropriate.

-Adoremus Bulletin

www.adoremus.org