Pittsburgh, Pa., Feb 13, 2019 / 01:34 pm (CNA).- The Diocese of Pittsburgh has launched a new addiction ministry to bring rehabilitation to addicts and families through a holistic approach, including spirituality and close relationships.
“We have a big opiate crisis in Pittsburgh, like every big city,” said Father Michael Decewicz, a recovering alcoholic and one of the leaders behind Addiction Recovery Ministry (ARM).
“How can we as Church respond in love to the addicted and the afflicted? This is our chance as Church, as people of God to reach out to those who are suffering addictions and afflicting their loved ones,” he told CNA.
ARM began Feb. 10 with a Mass of Healing from Addiction. An estimated 200 gathered at the liturgy, where addicts received Anointing of the sick.
Anointing of the sick “can be administered to a member of the faithful who, having reached the use of reason, begins to be in danger due to sickness or old age,” according to the Code of Canon Law.
Father Decewicz noted to CNA the proximity of the program’s initiation to the Feb. 11 feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. He said it correlates to the healing miracles of Lourdes, but also emphasized that addiction is a disease, not a moral choice.
The ministry is funded by Pittsburgh’s On Mission for the Church Alive campaign, a movement in the diocese to condense unused or small parishes into multi-parish groups. Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh said the program is an effort to strengthen ministries.
Located at the John Paul I Center in Sharpsburg, the program will begin with three meetings a week of either Narcotics Anonymous or NARANON, a support group for friends and family of addicts suffering from an addiction to narcotics.
Decewicz said program will later add Alcoholics Anonymous and ALANON, the family support group for alcoholics, and eventually have a variety of all four of these meetings three times a day.
The program will also include monthly opportunities for education on the disease of addiction and spiritual nourishment, which may include “a talk on the spirituality of recovery and addiction,” said Decewicz.
He said this ministry is an opportunity for evangelization. The results might not be immediate, he said, but these are moments to plant the seeds of the faith and help people, who often have been wounded by organized religion, reconsider the Church.
“God calls us in our brokenness. We need to spread that message that God touches us in our brokenness and in our frailty. To bring a message of compassion and empathy….to affirm the dignity of every human being regardless of what they are suffering,” he said.
“For years AA has met in the basement of the church, it’s time to invite them upstairs,” he said.
Father Decewicz said a major component of the ministry will be the opportunities for one-on-one encounters. If people call the program, he said the organization will the return the call within 24 hours and connect the person to a recovering addict who can be a guide or a friend.
Decewicz will be one of the individuals answering calls, helping direct people to the proper services, and discussing his or her experience. Another volunteer for the ministry is Carol Smith, a retired Program Manager for a women’s residential facility and a recovering addict of nearly 24 years.
“You need the right tools, the right people around you to support you,” she told CNA. “There is someone here who can help you, who can identify with you, and get [you] to a meeting.”
She stressed the healing potential of 12 steps programs and shared her own experience with addiction – getting into prescription drugs when she was about 12 and the damage that followed.
Smith was introduced to prescription painkillers because of a dental procedure. She fell in love with these opiates, she said, noting she began stealing drugs from her father’s drug store. After her little brother was born and she felt more estranged from her family, Smith began to spend more time with the wrong crowd, getting deeper into alcohol and other types of drugs.
Even as the drug habit progressed, she was able to function, receiving good grades throughout high school and getting accepted into the University of Pittsburgh. While maintaining an addiction to heroin, Smith graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and later on worked for the government as a supervisor in the welfare department.
She said her life began to take a tragic turn after her husband died. She was forced to resign from her position because of a problem with theft, and eventually ended up in the hospital with sores on her legs from heroin abuse. From the hospital, she was taken to jail which then led to a work release program.
After prison, the addiction was still too much, and Smith again began shooting up heroin. “[Getting high,] that’s all I know how to do. I’ve been doing it for the past 40 years,” Smith told her supervisor when she was confronted about her relapse. But, instead of getting taken back to jail, Smith was taken to an eight week outpatient program, where she was introduced to NA.
“I started going to meetings every day and that’s when the bulb finally went off – you can get through a day without getting high, you can live without using.”
Smith explained the importance of faith in the 12 step program, calling it an opportunity for people to experience the love of God. She further added that evangelization efforts begin with people living this love.
“God is a part of it,” she said. “There’s a lot of people, especially people in addiction, they think that God’s given up on them and that he could never love them with the horrible things they’ve done.”
“The biggest thing is you let them know that God’s love them,” she said. “I think it is more about being an example if you are going to try and have other people come to God or look at him the way you do.”
[…]
How DARE Paul Ryan call himself a Catholic. This is the Catholic Church that I remember.
I remember my outrage when the Catholic Church transferred Cardinal Bernard Laws to the Vatican after he was exposed for transferring pedophile priests in his diocese. I was even more infuriated when the Cardinal could participate in Pope John Paul’s funeral. For the first time in fifty years I questioned my devotion to the Church.
AND THEN I REMEMBERED:
A young black child attending and receiving communion without any fear or hesitation in all-white Catholic Churches in North Carolina and Virginia in the 40’s and 50’s.
Four Catholic nuns who traveled ten miles every Sunday on dirt roads to transport three young black children to Mass who had no other way to get to church.
I remember an elderly Catholic priest who brought communion EVERY Sunday for ten years to my disabled paternal grandmother even though she had nothing to contribute to the Church as she lived on $85.00 a month after my grandfather died.
I remember a big Irish Catholic priest who chose to work with the African-American community in the south in the 1950’s and organized a youth group among a handful of young black Catholics. That priest led this group of “rag tag” students down the main streets of a small southern city to protest segregation. One of those students, Joseph McNeil, went on to A&T State University where he organized and began the sit-down demonstrations at lunch counters in the Woolworth Stores. His actions initiated the integration of public facilities in this country. That lunch counter is enshrined in a museum in Greensboro, North Carolina.
I remember that same priest procured full scholarships for several young African-American women to attend the prestigious St. Mary College in South Bend, Indiana in 1959.
I remember requesting from the Josephites (priest’s community) a photo of Father Richard Swift to include in a book that I am writing and being astounded at a short bio included with the photo that chronicled his remarkable life of service.
I remember a wonderful Catholic priest who counseled and consoled me during my years of life with an alcoholic husband and severely asthmatic son.
I remember a jovial, happy priest who provided a full scholarship for my son to attend the local Catholic school when I couldn’t afford the tuition
I remember contacting a quiet Catholic priest, whom I had never met, and asking him to visit my son away in college in the hospital with a broken jaw that he sustained playing college football. Father Thomas Hadden went to visit my son without any hesitation and reported back to me. We became lifelong friends.
I remember a kind and gentle priest who helped me get the diocese to accept my divorces from two unhealthy marriages without any criticism or judgment.
During my second marriage, I had a daughter and I remember a very elderly Monsignor who held my hand, prayed with me, and counseled me when my husband walked out and left me with an eighteen-month-old daughter.
I remember two priests and two nuns who traveled with me to Wake Forest University to see that young lady graduate from college.
I remember a kindly Catholic priest, the son of a Methodist minister, who encouraged and supported a community clinic, food bank, dental clinic, and an unbelievable social outreach that turned no one away: all run by the Sisters of St Ursula and volunteers.
I remember all the Catholic clinics, food banks, and outreach programs sponsored by the Catholic Church throughout this country and the world that are supported by local priests and staffed by dedicated Catholic nuns and lay people.
I remember my years of involvement in all Catholic ministries, from training and assigning lectors to starting the first ever youth program at the St. Mary Cathedral in Wilmington, NC.
I remember a jolly, happy-go-lucky Irish priest obsessed with Notre Dame Football and a quiet, stern, holy priest with a wicked sense of humor; they changed my life forever. Their presence makes heaven a better place!
Pedophile priests should be excommunicated and so should those who continue to protect them. The behavior is unconscionable as young lives are destroyed. I weep when I learn of priests who continue to commit these horrendous acts and, I again, ask myself if I can continue to support the Roman Catholic Church ? THEN I REMEMBER:
“How DARE Paul Ryan call himself a Catholic.”
Huh. Is Paul Ryan a pedophile or a disgraced prelate? Did I miss something? Good grief.