“On Wings of Hope Toward a More Professional Approach to Lay Pastoral Ecclesial Ministers in the Catholic Church: An Anecdotal Account and Suggested Solution to the Problem” by Rachelle A. Comtois. ISBN 978-1-60264-904-0 (softcover). 136 pages. $12.95.
Before the priestly scandals that inadvertently laid bare the failures of Roman Catholic leaders to police their institutions and make sure they adhered to Church teachings, the author was a low paid employee at schools, missions, and diocesan offices from Mississippi to North Dakota to Massachusetts. In college, she was at first shocked at the degradation of Catholic teaching; nevertheless, by the time she graduated in 1985, she left with strong liberal sympathies. However, as the years passed, and after holding different positions in the Church from high school teacher to director of the Office of Social Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation for the Diocese of Worcester, she witnessed first hand the Church’s crumbling infrastructure and its desperate need to rebuild. As a result, her attitudes moved closer to the center and she began to consider what could be done to improve the situation. The result was a paper outlining how the Church could professionalize its employees at every level, a first basic step needed to begin repair of its infrastructure. “On Wings of Hope” is the story of the author’s experiential journey and the results of a lifetime lived for the Church she loved and the faith she cherished.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A native of Lowell, MA, Rachelle A. Comtois was raised in a traditional Catholic family before being exposed to the seductive teachings of liberalism and political correctness at such Catholic institutions as Emmanuel College in the 1980s. Feeling called to serve God through the Church, she traveled on missions to Kentucky and Mexico before taking a teaching assignment in Greenville, Mississippi. Frustrated by the secular climate she experienced there, she quit and became a house parent in a group home for girls. In 1989, she became a teacher at the St. Labre Indian Mission in Montana and later moved on the North Dakota where she worked as a youth minister for the Diocese of Bismarck. There, among other things, she escorted 3,000 young people to Denver, Colorado to attend World Youth Day with Pope John Paul II. Returning to Massachusetts in 1994, she took a position as director of the Office of Life, Peace, and Justice Issues and associate director in the Office of Religious Education for the Diocese of Worcester. Om 2004, Comtois earned a degree in Philosophy from Oxford University before ending her career where it began, in Lowell, Massachusetts as director of the Grandparents As Parents program at Catholic Charities in Lowell.
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