By Patrick Downes Hawaii Catholic Herald
Most of Hawaii’s priests will disappear from their parishes for five days in May to convene on Oahu’s north shore for their annual week of rejuvenation and fraternity. It’s the Priests Convocation 2017, May 15-19, at the Turtle Bay Resort in Kahuku.
The priests check in Monday at 2 p.m. Each day they will pray together, celebrate Mass together, dine together and socialize and listen to guest speakers talk about parish ministry and stewardship.
The convocation ends at 12:30 p.m. on Friday. That evening the priests will gather at the Co-Cathedral of St. Theresa in Honolulu for the priestly ordination at 6 p.m. of Alfred Omar Guerrero.
The convocation is mandatory for Hawaii’s active diocesan priests and religious order priests working in parishes. Retired priests and religious order priests working in other areas are “highly encouraged” to attend, according the Father Manuel Hewe, director of the diocesan Office of Clergy, which is coordinating the gathering.
Father Hewe said about 120 priests are expected.
While the priests are gone from their parishes, communion services led by deacons or lay people take the place of daily Mass, or Mass is arranged to be celebrated by priests not attending.
The Office of Clergy has lined up two Mainland speakers, theologian Ralph Martin from Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Father Andrew Kemberling, an advocate of stewardship from Denver.
Martin is the president of Renewal Ministries, an organization of Catholic renewal and evangelization that sponsors “The Choices We Face” weekly Catholic television and radio program. Renewal Ministries also does mission work in more than 30 countries.
He is also the director of graduate theology programs in evangelization and a professor of theology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in the Archdiocese of Detroit. Pope Benedict XVI appointed Martin as a consultor to the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization. He was also a theological expert for the Synod on the New Evangelization in Rome in 2012.
Father Kemberling is pastor of St. Vincent de Paul Parish in Denver, a board member of Colorado Family Action and Divine Mercy Hospice, and president of the Colorado Chapter of the Patrons of the Arts of the Vatican Museum.
He is a member of the International Catholic Stewardship Council and well known as a promoter of stewardship in the United States. He co-wrote the book “Making Stewardship a Way of Life: A Complete Guide for Catholic Parishes” and has helped many parishes and church leaders understand and embrace the concept of stewardship.
