Upcoming Events

Pastor’s Letter: August 23, 2026

Dear St. Philomena Parish Family,

Blessings to everyone this weekend! I’ve had a few folks ask here and there about our landscaping around the church—it is a noticeable project! The Diocese has asked parishes to plant trees as part of the celebration of our 150^th anniversary—a couple places we identified for new trees were on the south side of the church, where the previous trees had grown into the windows. As we have been planning and looking over the beds surrounding the church, we discovered several drainage issues that needed attention, including a couple that were going to require some digging. That combination made it a good time to update the landscaping scheme as a whole—the new plantings will continue the design scheme we have around the parish center. Hopefully it will be a nice addition for us to enjoy over time…as always in a parish our size, there are many good works in progress!

As I mentioned last column, this week I thought I would dive into the sensitive topic of annulments, one that certainly is larger in scope than what I usually cover here in the bulletin. I wanted to include it with our Marriage series, both to recognize its importance but also to serve as an invitation for conversation for anyone interested. I will plan to write a bit more generally here, but I encourage anyone to reach out who would like to talk more about a particular situation.

To begin, as a foundation point, the Catholic Church presumes the validity of all marriages that are entered into according to each culture or religious tradition. For example, if a Methodist and a Lutheran marry together according to the norms of their community, our starting assumption is that they have a valid marriage together. This would be the same for any religion, according to their normal practices. As mentioned in previous columns, Catholics do have certain requirements for a valid marriage..