“Blessed are the nice.”

Many well-intentioned people who serve the church insert this ninth beatitude into their work — to the detriment of their ministry. Effective leadership instead is based on radical love, which is grounded in trust, does not eschew conflict and allows for commitment, accountability and, ultimately, results. 

The conference, which includes the state’s Catholic bishops, says House Bill 3391 “forces insurance companies to cover abortion on demand and it forces all Oregon taxpayers to help finance an extremist abortion agenda that does not enjoy majority support.”

With this column I begin a closer look at the six pastoral priorities for the Archdiocese of Portland that flow from our pastoral assembly held last fall. As you will recall, the pastoral assembly gathered the priests and pastoral council representatives from the parishes of the archdiocese in order to discuss and settle upon these priorities for the next three years. The Archdiocesan Pastoral Council has discussed the input received at the assembly and has fine-tuned these priorities at our last two meetings.

The first pastoral priority is catechesis and faith formation. As with all of the pastoral priorities, five specific initiatives have been identified based on the input received at the pastoral assembly.