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ABOUT US

Our Mission Statement

We are the Friends of St. Paul Parish and our aim is simple—to assist in the salvation of
souls and evangelize in the area of the City of Saint Paul, MO.

 

To achieve this goal, we intend to utilize all of our rights and responsibilities under the
Code of Canon Law of the Catholic Church in an attempt to preserve St. Paul Parish in the City of Saint Paul, MO, as an independent parish in the Archdiocese of St. Louis. We undertake this mission in a spirit of prayer and fidelity to the authority and teachings of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church and to the local authority of His Excellency, Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski, Metropolitan of the Archdiocese of St. Louis. We in no way oppose his good governance of our particular church and desire only to provide that cooperation and dialogue which is proper to His Holiness, Pope Francis’s desire for a synodal church.


Therefore, we have chosen Mr. Joseph Granicke, of 13 Brushy Hill Ct., Saint Paul, MO,
63366, as our procurator for our administrative and canonical response to the All Things New initiative. His task is to represent the interests of all those parishioners of St. Paul who have empowered him to do so by means of the Procurator Mandate for St. Paul Parish, in accordance with Canon 212 §2-3. Mr. Granicke is assisted in this task by the Mandate Team of the Friends of St. Paul. That team is chaired by Mr. Jay Sigmund, and comprised of Catherine Ell (Treasurer), Cheryl Pickering (Secretary), Todd Bishop, Christine Schroer, Kathleen Chostner, Chuck Gentemann, and Benjamin Bravo.
Under the intercession of St. Paul and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and in cooperation
with Save Our St. Louis Parishes and The St. Joseph Foundation, we aim to use the canonical appeals process to address our concerns with the All Things New initiative.

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These concerns are
 

1) The model used by the Catholic Leadership Institute to plan for the All Things New
initiative is that of the secular business world, and therefore inadequate for the needs of
God’s Church, a sacred society.

 

2) All Things New relies on insufficient dialogue and gradualism to satisfy both the norms
of Canon Law and the June 2020 Instruction from the Dicastery for the Congregation of
the Clergy “The Pastoral Conversion of the Parish Community in the Service of the
Evangelizing Mission of the Church.”

 

3) The Catholic Leadership Institute’s refusal to inform the general populace of the
Archdiocese of St. Louis of any data suggesting their models have been effective means
of evangelization in those dioceses in which they have consulted previously.

 

4) Our fear that the Archdiocese’s own projection of a loss of 20%-30% of practicing
Catholics in the wake of All Things New represents a grave and unnecessary challenge to
evangelization for our parish and local community. We further fear the Archdiocese
has underestimated of the numbers of Catholics who could leave the Church, as the St.
Joseph Foundation, on the basis of its previous cases, projects a loss of 40%-65% of the
current Catholic population. 

 

5) Our fear that the proposed extinctive merger of our parish and closure of our church
represents, along with like plans for the other parishes of our Planning Area, a grave and

unnecessary impediment to our area, which includes 3 of the 5 fastest growing counties
in the state of Missouri.

 

6) Our fear that the above consolidation and sale of infrastructure represents a grave and
unnecessary impediment to the ongoing sacramental and catechetical needs of our parish, which is the second fastest growing parish in the Archdiocese, which boasts a 70%
attendance rate for weekly Mass among its registered parishioners, and which is a
territory in which Catholics make up 35% of the total population.

 

7) Our concern for the preservation of our historic and cultural patrimony. St Paul Parish is constitutive of the city of Saint Paul, MO and the intricate links between the people of the parish and the people of the city—so often one and the same—constitute key means of the local church’s evangelization and witness to the Gospel through acts of worship,
education, charity for the poor, and pro-life activity. The Church of St. Paul is the heart of
the community. We fear insufficient regard—or outright disregard—for these factors may
well impede the work and witness of the Church in this locale for generations.
In sum, our concern is for the evangelization of souls, that they may attain the salvation of
Christ Jesus through his One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church present in Saint Paul, MO.

 

If you share this mission or would like to support our work, please contact us at
SaveOurStPaulParish@gmail.com. We are

 

Yours in Christ,
The Friends of St. Paul

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