Wives of deacons find ways to minister

National Catholic Reporter, Jan 23, 1998 by Patricia Lefevere

MINNEAPOLIS -- It's customary to give a newly-ordained priest a chalice as a gift. After all, it's an important instrument of his office.

Of course, the wife of a deacon isn't being formally ordained to anything when the bishop lays hands on her husband. But she certainly shares in the experience. Let's say you wanted to get her a similarly fitting gift. What would it be?

Sue Ann Schneider got 1,200 disposable baby diapers when her husband Terrence became a deacon for the St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese. Pat Fidler received cases of iron-fortified infant formula after her husband, Donald, was ordained a deacon.

They were the right gifts for Schneider and Fidler, two of the key figures in Phoebe Ministries, a new group for deacons' wives in the Twin Cities. One of its first projects was to supply diapers, formula and other support to needy mothers.

Its broader goals include enhancing the spiritual growth, mutual support and personal enrichment of the wives of deacons and reaching out to serve new and established ministries in the archdiocese. The women take their group's name from Romans 16, wherein St. Paul commends to the community "our sister Phoebe, a deaconess of the church at Cenchrea ... help her with anything she needs" (the word in Greek is diakonos, the same term used for male deacons -- Paul indicates no distinction).

"Phoebe started in a parking lot," Schneider said. It began in May 1995 after "our Urban Plunge experience," she said. To prepare for Urban Plunge, diaconal candidates and their wives spent two days studying the church's social teachings, then plunged into many of the facilities operated by Catholic Charities in the Twin Cities. These include shelters, soup kitchens, orphanages, centers for unwed mothers and homes for recovering alcoholics and for former prostitutes.

After visiting these establishments, some of the wives wanted to assist them. At Branch I, a drop-in center near downtown Minneapolis, poor mothers use the food pantry and take home formula and diapers when they are available. Serious shortages of these provisions coupled with smaller welfare benefits to poor families ignited Phoebe Ministries to try to supply Branch I with 6,000 diapers and 300 large cans of formula annually.

The women run drives at parishes and schools, where they collect 600 to 800 diapers at a time, plus cash donations. Schneider's basement in suburban Plymouth has become a diaper and formula warehouse since the project took off two years ago. Her night prayers include a request for a "diaper depot" where donations could be collected and from which parishes and centers could request supplies.

Stretched faith

Schneider said her faith has stretched since Schneider and Fidler -- along with Karen Johnson, wife of Deacon Fred Johnson -- launched Phoebe. "At first I used to pray: `Lord, just show me something so I can know what to do.'" On one occasion, she had a dream following this prayer in which she saw a shelf with six hooks underneath it. Hanging from the hooks were six denim aprons. Schneider shared that dream months later with Marie Backmann -- also the wife of a newly ordained deacon -- for whom the dream had an eerily familiar ring.

Backmann, a ceramist, had desired to use her skills for Phoebe but didn't know how. She wanted to reach out to the Native American community who frequent the archdiocese's Office of Indian Ministry.

"I know the self-esteem that builds when doing ceramics," she said. "I also the artistic skills of Native Americans, but how could I teach when I had little money and no kiln?" she wondered, her pencil underlining the $900 she needed to buy one.

Backmarm prayed. The scriptural memo "sell all that you have" began to pinch. She downsized with a garage sale that netted $500. She took her perfume bottle collection to a pawn shop for a few hundred more dollars. "I told God I was even willing to part with my Christmas plate collection, `but please don't make me.'" she recalled.

When the pawn broker rang up the final item and she added the change in her purse, she had her $900 and did not have to cash in her beloved plates.

But Backmann had no experience teaching ceramics to youngsters, only to adults and the handicapped. She heard there were children!s classes at St. Joseph's Home for Children in Minneapolis. She went to see for herself.

When she told the instructor she wanted to teach staining and glazing, the woman pointed to six denim aprons hung on hooks under a shelf and said, "Then you'll have to use those."

Dreaming has always been part of Pat Fidler's life, too. She dreamed she'd be a mother one day, tried for years, but she and her husband came to accept their infertility. They run a support group for childless couples and would like to start a special ministry to them as a deacon couple. Noting that one out of six U.S. couples has experienced fertility problems, Fidler spoke of the "terrible loneliness" it can bring.

But despite having no child of their own, the Fidlers are hardly childless. At Donald's ordination, two nieces were altar servers. Throughout their marriage, the couple has borrowed the children of friends, family and neighbors for weekends and to share events. When Fidler visited children in shelters, she found them not only deprived of housing but often behind in educational attainment too.