 So let's begin with prayer, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen. Because of the theme of the conferences from the Father's heart, let's just give thanks and praise and worship to our Heavenly Father. And let's pray in our Father together. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, amen. And Lord, we thank you for the gift of the sacrament of holy orders, for the gift of the priesthood, the men that you have called, that you had a call on their lives since before they were born. And we know they're not perfect, but we want to thank you for the gift of the priesthood and for these men who have given their lives. Without them we would not have the Eucharist, and that means we would be without you. Without union with you. We ask for your Holy Spirit to come to anoint this session, that it will be fruitful for each and every one of us, and even resolve some issues right here that we have with some priest. We thank you, Holy Spirit, for all of your guidance and your consolation and your love. Amen. The name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Welcome. Quick question, I would ask you your name, but what, what, oh, good, oh, we, we really need you. This is good. We needed one priest. Okay, so, can I, can I, can I ask you, can I ask you what, well, what's your name? Andre. Andre? Andre. Andre. Sorry, I don't hear very well. Andre, Andre, what, what position do you hold, how do you work with priests? At the Dostalusian level? Okay. Okay. She's on your team? No, his team. Okay, so would you mind moving over here? We're going to do some small group things, and let me figure out just, I need a second to think, oh, I, I'm, I'm going to get to speak with you, okay? Did that sound like we're going to battle it out? That's not what I meant. I need lots of help, so, okay, so, welcome, glad you came. Okay, so everybody got handouts, right? Just by way of beginning here, we're going to be focusing on three aspects. Proper attitude of working with the priest, relationships with priests, and meetings with priests, okay? And kind of the major focus will be attitudes, and then, well, yeah. Okay, so I just want to lay the context here, and I am sure everybody in the room knows this, but it's helpful to put this out here before we start some discussion, okay? So at the top, I just put what the descriptor of the, the workshop is, but you can see, so I want to set the context by saying, okay, who is a priest, and then taking it, you know, the next step, well, okay, so who is a priest, and this is based on the Catechism, I'm not going to read it all, I'm just going to highlight a few things, okay? So he's consecrated in Christ's name to feed the church by the word and grace of God, okay? A priest acts in the person of Christ, in persona Christi, okay, to serve in the name and in the person of Christ the head, okay? In the ministerial priesthood confers the sacred power for the service of the faithful in three means, by teaching, divine worship, and by authority, okay? Pastoral governance, but people kind of have problems, connotations about governance, so I just include the word authority, which is really a proper word too, okay? Priests are called to be the bishop's prudent co-workers, okay? So they're really the closest collaborators with the bishop. Most of you work, I work for a bishop, but his closest collaborators are his priest. We need to know that, and that's the way Christ set it up, okay? So a priest receives from the bishop the charge of a parish community, and he's entrusted with the pastoral authority, and so if you work in a parish or even at the diocesan level, it's good to know that the priest in a parish will always have the final decisions, okay? So if you're on a team per se, and you help him in a more deliberative way, not just a consultative way, the priest is the spiritual father, he's going to ultimately make the decisions, but obviously he's asking you to be on his team if indeed he has a team, or even just, you know, to serve in the parish, he has the ultimate authority. Okay, and in receiving the sacrament of holy orders, there's this solemn prayer of consecration prayed where the bishop, and I think we joined in obviously, asking God to grant the ordnance the graces of the Holy Spirit required for his ministry. Okay, so I hope that came out in a very reverent way, because as I was preparing for this, I went to prayer after one time I was working on this, and it was like, I was just kind of like overwhelmed with these men that God had called, and what God has given them in the sacrament. Now we're going to come to the second half, they're human beings, and they have weaknesses, and I'm not going to just do that without looking at my notes, but we're coming to that, but let's just, let's sit in this for a minute, okay? Because after the fall there's issues, right? There's problems, there's conflict, there's, you know, unhealthy disorder, whatever word you want to use, and that's going to be there, but God gives us the grace to work with that, and just remember when we go to the next part, well, we have issues too, and we have problems, and we have weaknesses and sin, so let's just keep this balanced, okay? Now that's not to say if some priests have some serious problems, then maybe, you know, maybe you want to go to a higher level and they need to get help, but for now, let's keep this balanced, okay? Okay, at the bottom of the first page, the green sheet on attitude, I do want to read this paragraph, it's by Father Paul Scalia, amazing priest, I don't know him personally, but what he writes and what he says and what his father represented, I'm sure we all love him. The priest as an image of Christ is born out in the three roles of the priest as teacher, sanctifier, and authority, echoing Christ's role as prophet, priest, and king. The gifts, the gifts of celibacy and poverty are evidence of the fatherly role of the priest. When a man gives up the natural good of marriage in the priesthood, he knows and believes that souls are worth it. He is freed up to sacrifice himself for his flock. Spiritual fatherhood stems from a priest living a celibate life and being confident that new life comes into the world through grace. Let me read that sentence again, because that took me a while, I mean it doesn't seem difficult to understand now, but for me the first time I didn't really get what it was saying. Spiritual fatherhood stems from a priest living a celibate life and being confident that new life in Christ comes into the world through grace. Celibacy becomes a sign of that spiritual fruitfulness. The priest is not relying on his own powers to beget life, but he's relying upon grace. Voluntary poverty is connected to the notion of spiritual fatherhood. In a life of poverty, the priest is not relying upon how much he has, he is relying on grace. Now, I don't want to underplay that probably some of you, maybe all of you except me, because I already went through what we're going to, a little exercise we're going to go through and the Lord showed me, like, you know, what's going on in my heart about a couple priests. Anyway, again, let's just keep this balance, this respect, and mostly an awe for the sacrament, okay? But again, not downplaying problems and issues because that's what this is going to hopefully help with. Okay, so next slide. So the other side of the coin, a priest is also a fellow human being with weaknesses who experiences conversion and routinely receives the sacrament of confession. I'm not going to ask for a show of hands, but who's in the room thinking, yeah, does he ever go to confession? Okay, but let's again. So this presence of Christ in the minister is not to be understood as if the latter were preserved from all human weaknesses, the spirit of domination, error, even sin. Okay, the power of the Holy Spirit does not guarantee all acts of ministers in the same way. While this guarantees extents to the sacraments, skipping down in many other acts, the minister leaves human traces that are not always signs of fidelity to the gospel and consequently can harm the apostolic fruitfulness of the church. Welcome, you're welcome to the front. Hi, that's your gift to the front. Okay, so there's a scripture that I think helps this kind of just summarize the whole thing. Saint Paul said, but we have this treasure in earthen vessels. It's a good way to look at a priest, a holy man called by God, but he's an earthen vessel so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not for ourselves. In other words, we need to respect the treasure of this man's priesthood, but we need to recognize that this priest lives out the mystery of his priesthood in an earthen vessel. Okay, so again, the balance. A Christ's life respect for this man called by God and this fellow human being with weaknesses and sin. Okay, so what does our attitude need to be toward a priest? And again, I'm not saying shove, forget some issues or problems, but just what does our attitude need to be toward a priest to keep it in good balance? We need to show respect for him as a person in spiritual fatherhood, recognize his natural and spiritual gifts and any particular gifts which he is non-endowed, have a non-judgmental perspective about how much he is doing. I can remember one time I was thinking, yeah, I think you have a cushy life, Father. I didn't know very much because I called him to quote him in an article and he started telling me a story about the sacrament of the nointing of the sick. That's what the article was on. And it had just happened recently and he was called in the middle of the night to go to anoint somebody and he was there all night. And then I happened to know what he was called to the next day. So it's like, okay, so we need to give priests the benefit of the doubt. We have no idea. Okay, that was already the second one. Okay, so in other words, if he's cranky, just give him the benefit of the doubt. He might have been up all night. And if not, pray goes to confession. Okay. Okay, be convicted that you're on the same team. Okay, you're on the same side. We're fighting principalities and powers out there. We're on the same side serving together in the same goal. Okay. And we need to have the attitude of the church that priests serve their bishops and are his primary collaborator. They're not our understudies. We don't have authority over them. Okay. Be thankful that he responded to God's call on his life. Okay. If you came just a little late, this is to set the context before we start doing some, you know, nitty-gritty. As I kind of started in the beginning that we're always going to have issues, problems, struggles, conflicts, you name it, whatever you want. But we're always going to have this. Okay. We don't need to write it off. We don't need to act like a doormat. But we do need to deal with it properly. Okay. And I'm sure most of us are. Well, you probably are. Sometimes I don't. Okay. So next side, what I'd like you to do, you know what? Let's do this before we start this. So the people that walked in after I'd started talking, not to embarrass you, but how can we do this? Let's see. Okay. This is the goal. Okay. This is what I don't want. I don't want you to be next to somebody that you work with, but I do want you with someone with the same position. So if your diocesan official, raise your hand. If your diocesan official and you came, if you came late, if you don't, if you have your hat, already have your partner, don't raise your hand. Okay. So, but you three know each other? No. Okay. So, okay. How about you two? If you would come over here and then if you would come up with her, do you know each other? Yeah. Husband and wife? No. Okay. Sorry. Okay. Good. Okay. Good. Good. Okay. So would you join with her? Would you join with her? Okay. Did you have your hand up? Would you work with her? And you have a partner, right? Yeah. Okay. Then you're all set. Okay. Let's see. Who else? Who else? Who else? Who else? Are you diocesan? What do you do? What's your? Diocesan? Okay. Would you put together? Okay. And ma'am, sorry to put you on the spot, but what's your position? What is it? At a parish? At a parish. Okay. Who, who does not, who wasn't here when I was organizing all this? And do you work at a parish? Okay. Would you join with her? Pardon? Oh, you're the diocese. Okay. Father, would you be with her? Okay. Who came in that doesn't have a partner that works at a parish? Parish. Okay. Paco. Would you be her parish? And then the two of you can be together. Okay. So we're all good with twos. Okay. I think we've got it. Now does everybody have a partner? And you're with someone with a similar position? Okay. And you probably want to sit as close together as possible. It's not like anybody needs to really hear everything you're saying. Okay. Okay. Okay. We haven't started yet. Wait. Okay. Okay. What I want you to do is only answer this question and don't read anything else down the page. Just this is all I want you to do. Name a situation that went well when you worked with a specific priest and then list a few reasons why it went well. Now let me just say this. One or two words are good. You don't have to write the whole thing out because if you just put two or three words it's going to help you know what you meant. Right. Okay. So keep it really brief just so that we can keep moving. So I'll give you one minute. Okay. Write down a situation that went well that when you worked with a specific priest and list a few reasons why it went well. Okay. Everybody got it? Okay. Go. One minute. Okay. So this is different than what we're going to do with the small groups. What I want to do is just call on a couple people. You don't have to give a lot of details. In fact, maybe about a minute max. Okay. If you could just tell us what were the reasons that it went well. Okay. You were first. Oh. Oh. And could you come and talk on the microphone? Yeah. Did you raise your hand? Okay. And you work at a diocese and you don't need to tell us where. Well, you don't. Well, actually no. You ketted this one. Yeah. It went well. So you could say which diocese if you will. Okay. Now remember one. One minute. Okay. So I worked at another diocese work really well because I did intentionally look for the pastors and tried to work with the pastors. So when it worked. Oh, one priest. Okay. One priest. Okay. One priest. Basically affirming that priest, you know. So I think that's why it went well. Thank you father for all that you do for all your work. And then start with, you know, anything else. But yes, it did work very well. Respecting also his authority as, you know, as a priest, as a man of God. So always in that humility and respect for the priest and affirmation. Okay. Could you say one thing he did that made it work well? That he did. Well, he responded very well to that. Okay. Great. Thank you. I'm going to diocese now. But the priest that I'm thinking of is when I was at a school, he was the pastor. And for two years, he was also the principal of the school. And I was the campus minister and it worked well because we met weekly together. Um, I always felt again, he had a very clear vision that and he was really gifted at getting us on board. And so just kind of the way that our visions aligned very well. And so I always appreciated that I felt heard and listened to in any idea, even if I was like, I think this is a bad idea, but I'm just going to like throw it out there anyway. I always just felt like that was, I was able to share those ideas. But at the same time, he was always challenging us to go the next level to really strive for greatness in our ministry. But if we ever like had questions or had like struggles with that, he welcomed us to come and talk to him and be like, if you think that this idea that I have is terrible, like I, you know, let's talk about it. I might tell you, no, at the end of the day, but I'll listen to you. Okay, yes. My attitude towards him. Yes. Um, I think those were incredible years of ministry. We brought, um, I brought one, one seventh grader. He was a new kid to the school and he wound up getting baptized the end of that year. Does that answer? Or does that not what you were thinking of? Yes, he did bring out the best in me and I really look to him as a mentor. Okay. As well. And you work at a school, your Catholic school teacher. The priest that I want to talk about, he was our chaplain at our high school, but he was also the director of vocations for our diocese. Brilliant. And, but what was brilliant about him is you always knew you were safe. He would take care of everything. You respected him because he was so competent and he was so comfortable in his own skin and who he was. And, but yet comfortable enough in his own skin that he could respect and enter into dialogue with anybody else, even if they disagreed with him and he would sit down and have a conversation. And we were able to talk like colleagues. Consequently, I not only looked at him as somebody that I could count on, but also somebody that was my friend and we had him in our home and he went fishing with my husband and, you know, he's still now, even though they've moved him to one of the big seminaries, my youngest son wants to be a priest and I continue to reach out to him for advice on him because he was such so beautifully intellectual, but he never was above anyone. He was still just right with us. Okay. Can you think of something it sounds like again you responded to his gift? No, no, no, no. No, because he and I, we had a very reciprocal relationship. I would go down and I'd say, what do you think about this? And then he would talk and then he'd say, what do you think about this? And I valued the exchange and the respect that went on and there was even one, we had, there was one moment that we really disagreed on masculine identity and feminine identity because when he first started, just a specific example, maybe it's too much sharing, but whatever, we'll just go there. It was about breast augmentation and he was like, no, no, no. And we just went toe to toe, but then he came into the classroom and he talked about a soldier, a man going to war and getting this blown off or this blown off and that that could be replaced because it restored his masculine identity. And I said, well, what about a woman who's had her breasts stolen from cancer? You know, an insurance would pay to have, would pay to have that augmentation to restore her feminine identity. And he was a great listener and it was beautiful conversation because then he was able to come around and respected where we can and had a whole change of heart as well. So it was beautiful. So your confidence and respect and that was all okay. Okay. Okay. Paco. And if you can, of course, I want to hear what the priest did, you know, how he was added so much, but also how you brought things that made it good to the table. Okay, great. I was in a parish working with the pastor on the leadership team. And what I was able to bring to the table was a lot of honest affirmation about the good that he did and a lot of honest critique of what he wasn't doing well. And he could receive that well because he knew I was for him. He knew I was going to cooperate with him. And we, we had the freedom to fight for the truth. Like it wasn't once it was many times on the leadership team. We had real conversations, but they were always respectful. Even sometimes they got heated. That didn't make any difference because he knew we were for him. And, and sometimes it was like this. Okay. He'd say, I want it this way after a long conversation, then that's okay. But if it didn't work, he had the humility to come back and say it's not, it doesn't work. And we didn't say, ha, ha, ha. No, rather, we said, okay, how about looking at it again, the way that we, we were proposing it. And that relationship, the thing I want to say about him was he had the maturity and the security to acknowledge the giftedness of his leaders. And he wasn't threatened by the fact that one of the leaders was actually a better teacher than him. And one was a better pastor in terms of pastoral skill than him. But he used all that. And he was tremendous and encouraging others to take their place and to use their gifts. And we thanked him for it all the time. And he felt, he felt our loyalty. He experienced our affirmation and our 100% commitment to the mission with him. Okay. Moving to the next step now. What I'd like you to do is take about five minutes. And let's just have it completely silent. If you get finished early, then let's just keep it quiet. Because this is, this is going to be some holy ground here. That you're going to walk through and answer, I think it's six questions. And it's about a situation that hasn't gone well. Okay. And it's, it's kind of a two sided, you know, why, but, but also what was your, what's your attitude or what was your attitude about it? Okay. I just have to tell you, I practiced myself just to, you know, I was just going to work. And I was like, okay, I think I need to go to confession, like in 15 minutes. Anyway, it's just really helpful. And that's, you know, whatever. But it's just a really good, you know, is he maybe making mistakes will possibly, or is he maybe not able to do his job as well as he used to, because he's got all these health issues. Or is he this or is he that? Is he immature because he's only been ordained two years. He, you know, he's growing into his priestly identity, whatever. But let's just walk through it and kind of find out some things that, that we can let go of. And it changes the situation. Okay. So again, about five minutes. And then I'll lead you into what we're going to do. It seems like you had very good discussion. So sorry I'm going to do this, but I'm going to call on two people just to give me one reason. Hopefully you found this helpful. Heather, one reason. Do you need a little time to process or no? Okay. Oh, could you stand up? So I found this helpful. First of all, make a new friend. And second of all, to realize we are not alone. So I think a lot of times we end up in kind of like a very lonely place in church ministry as a professional Catholic, you it's weird to relate to sort of regular Catholics sometimes. So it's nice to meet other people that are having the same struggles. Maybe their names are different in their situations are different, but the flavor is the same. And so there's that. And I think the solutions are also the same, which we talked about. We are on the same team with these priests that we work with and for. And we want the same things. And they want the same things too. And it's a matter of kind of getting over the quirks that we are as humans to serve the Lord together. And I think that's, in the end, that's really the fundamental answer to all of these difficult spots. Thank you. Thank you. Emily, would you come up and give one reason why this is helpful? Thank you. Yeah, I think at the end of the day, we're both human. And to recognize that we have been called to different vocations within the church, but they are both equally very important and actually meant to work in relationship with each other. I'm also a big Brene Brown fan. Thank you. And so she, yeah, that's a whole nother workshop. But if so, Brene Brown is like a social like technically a social worker, but she considers herself like a professional storyteller. So she is real big on vulnerability. And I've found in approaching a priest to say, you know, I want to support you, but I need you to know that I've been wounded in this way. And I'm working to get past it. But I need you to hear this from me because part of my healing is to share that I've been wounded in this way. And I've found I've had to do that couple, I was sharing actually had to do that with my vicar. And I didn't know if I'd have a job because he he's kind of a gruff man. But especially as a woman, I think sometimes priests, there's a little bit of a wall there because there has been, you know, culturally society, there's just there's a wall. And so there has to be a place where we can come to an understanding of respect, but also a place where we can say, I need you to understand that to work together, we have to have mutual respect. And I don't want to be a priest. I am not trying to be ordained. But I'm a mother, I'm a wife, I'm living out my vocation, and I desire holiness and communion with God in the same way you do. And we can actually help each other be better in this way. But to own, I think, to be willing to be the first person, because what I found a lot of times priests avoid conflict, because they don't know how to resolve it very well, or it's uncomfortable. So sometimes we have to be the first person to go and say, I really need to talk to you. And maybe it's confession, I don't know how you want to do it. But I think to own, not to place blame, but to just say, I need you to know that this really hurt me. And it probably hurt me because I'm dealing with some of these kinds of other wounds. But I need you to know that that when you did this, it struck me this kind of way. And I want to trust that you didn't believe or intend to hurt me that way. But I just want you to know in your role as a pastor that it's important to be aware of some relational key things like this, especially towards women. So. Beautiful. Okay, two things I just want to say. This is a little bit of a tangent, but very important. You should not, should not go to confession to the priests you work for. Okay. That's just an unwritten rule. Okay. And then to close this out. To close this out, I think I need to add a question at the bottom for no matter what the situation is that, you know, we're all dealing with different situations. But ultimately, you know, we, we can't change another person, but we can change ourselves. And so what I'd like to add at the bottom, if you'd like to add it, have I prayed for this priest? Okay. It's a very good question to get to. Because, you know, talking about him or being angry or whatever is not going to resolve anything. And in fact, Satan is actually winning. Okay. But if we pray for him, the situation will start changing because we can change ourselves. Okay. And remember, as long as we're on planet earth, whether it's your best friend or not, sometimes it's going to feel like sandpaper, the relationship. Okay. And so prayer helps things. Let's move to the next handout. Working with priests, building authentic relationships. Okay. So again, keeping in balance, we need to respect the treasure of this man's priesthood, but we need to recognize that he lives out the mystery of his priesthood in an earthen vessel. Okay. So how do we develop authentic relationships? Many things have already expressed the same things. Number one, show regard for his person. Okay. With sincerity, ask him how he is doing. One of my prior pastors, I saw him and he's overly blunt and maybe with me because I feel like I do know him. But he's, you know, anyway, so I ask him how things are going at the parish and I hadn't seen him in a really long time. And it, I think it really deeply hurt him. I wasn't asking how he was. I was asking how the parish, you know, how's it going there? It's a tremendous parish. But anyway, just that has struck me that, you know, to keep this balance, look, this priest is not going to be my buddy and my best friend. I'm not going to go out to dinner with him, you know, socially. I mean, it's just not going to happen. Okay. But as a human being, that this is a person, a child of God and above all called by God to serve us by giving his entire life. Okay. Take note of one of his interests. And at the right time in the level of relationship, you know, ask him about it. If he's, you know, got a picture of golf clubs or something. I'm just off the top of my head. Does he hunt? Does he fish? Does he like to read? Does he like to travel? Whatever, you know, if you notice something at the right time in a leisurely conversation, ask about it. Not in the middle of an important meeting, obviously. Okay. And then observe the necessary boundaries. Where and when will you meet with the priest? And especially I'm talking to the women in the room. Okay. Meet during business hours in a place where there are other people in the building who are aware that you are meeting like a secretary or something. Okay. If a meal will be part of the meeting, then other people need to be included. If it's a woman and a priest. Okay. If the age is close between you and priest, consider this. Does there need to be even a third person in a regular meeting? Just a possibility. Or the door is open or something like that. Okay. Just for your protection and theirs. We live in a really kind of crazy culture. Okay. To draw this together, what I wanted you to do was share with somebody, how do you deal with conflict and what kind of personalities are most challenging for you? But we're really running out of time. But maybe you want to just talk with somebody, even while you're walking to the next session or something like that. It's helpful to speak it out so that you know like how you're reacting or whatever, maybe, you know, and there's ways of improving on working on dealing with conflict. Okay. So just to kind of sum up the whole personality thing. And hopefully you went back through the couple questions just to figure out maybe personalities that don't work so well with yours. Okay. But the personality types of others, so God has designed us in complementary ways and we need all the gifts. Okay. So we need to accept and be patient especially with other people's weaknesses and then also tune into their gifts. So the next page, so in working with priests, we really need to have a working relationship. Okay. And build appropriate friendships and set the proper boundaries. Okay. Women above all, we need to dress in business attires that is modest. And in that category, I'm just going to, I'm not going to read the whole code of canon law, number 519. And it's just paraphrase there, but really that summary is the pastor is the proper shepherd of the parish entrusted to him. Okay. And you don't maybe need to say it. Maybe you need to not say it, but or say it, but that we recognize that and we're in total support of you as the pastor. We're not trying to take over or run the show or whatever. Okay. And acknowledge our personality types. Like my first job at, I worked for two parishes and this one priest told me later he wasn't, he was going to vote that they didn't hire me. He said, just because I saw the way you sat there at the interview and I said, what did I do? And he said, you didn't do anything. I could just tell you had so much energy, you were going to have to be tied down. I was like, what? I don't mean, I mean, he didn't go, he didn't quite say it that way, but it was pretty like, so I mean, I kind of set out to really get to know him and let him know, look, all my energy is going to go into this program. I'm not going to overrun you or anything, but probably I was scaring him to like, what's this girl going to, she's going to come in and take over. That was the farthest thing from my mind. Okay. So they need to know us and they need to know our weaknesses and our strengths too. Okay. So how do we work to priests? Just a couple words here. Encouragement, confidentiality, probably the most important thing is support. Support. Maybe this priest isn't like the last priest we just had at our parish, but he's got gifts. Seek them out. Find those gifts and pray for him. Okay. A listening ear, humility and apology when needed. And I would add at the bottom, I just recognized it this morning, forgiveness, forgiveness, that we can forgive things that they've done maybe to us. Okay. Finally, in closing, because we only really have a couple of minutes, the appointments and meetings is based on I'm one of the trained consultants under the Patrick Lincione method. And so that's a two-day training for a priest and his team. So a colleague and I do these trainings mostly in our diocese, but also around the country. We work for Evangelion Consulting. It's Keith Borchers who trained under Patrick Lincione. Anyway, long story short, I laid this out in somewhat in the model of this method. And so it's not like I just kind of dream this up and no, I'm on a team personally at our diocese. The bishop said when we came back to go do training in parishes, he said, this sounds so good. Before you go anywhere, we're going to have it done here at the diocesan center, two teams. And so I'm on a team. We've been on since 2013, and it's working incredibly well. Do we have difficulties? Yes. Do we have challenges? Do we have conflict? Of course, but it's working incredibly well because of that two-day training that built us through a process that number one placed our prayer lives and spirituality at the foundation. And so we pray together. We have a holy half an hour every other week. We do some formation together. Who's got time for this? We fit it in. It's amazing. We continue to get to know each other. And the next thing is trust. And that trust has to continually be built. Okay. Anyway, there's more to it. But this meeting, I was looking at it and I thought, wow, this is pretty darn good. Well, I mean, I summarize, but it's based on Patrick Lincione. And there's a couple things like, who is telling me, oh, she's not here. That their meetings are awful. And I said, well, why don't you, you know, offer to ask the priest maybe just didn't know how to run meetings or he really didn't know what, what he's going to accomplish in a meeting. Ask if, you know, you could facilitate it. He's in charge, but you facilitated and set up the agenda when you get to the meeting and then do things like, oh, gosh, for the first 10 years, I was at the Diocesan Center. I learned how to sleep with my eyes open. We had these meetings that were two hours and they were brutal because they were reports and everybody, what else are you going to do? You're trying to kind of start to convince everybody you're doing a lot, which we are, of course, but it's like, no, come on, come on. I don't have two hours to give up to do this. We have one hour a week meetings and we, where the Lord has taken us, and we're all moving in the same direction. And because we're, we all have our own jobs, our positions. But when we do something like make theology, the body, the main focus of all of our work, it's, it's coming in all the different ways than from the diocese. And we're helping in all the different constituencies. Okay, I need to get off of that. But so it's setting up an agenda in most cases at the meeting. It's you, us, that we write down what the main point of the meeting is, if you're just setting up a meeting with the priest, you know, by yourself, for instance, maybe that needs to happen a lot, especially at a parish. Some, some really good things that in our training we learned about conflict. And I just captured some of those keys, okay, when conflict arises, etc. And then probably two of the most important things is when a decision has been agreed upon, that somebody repeats what that decision is. If not, you walk out and everybody's got their own idea what it is. Second thing is that you even write out, no matter how long it takes sometimes an hour to get the language right, that you're not going to, you know, turn off a bunch of people because of the words that were chosen. Okay, and that's kind of right there explained what to do. Okay, I want to just close out because I don't think we read it. We didn't. The last page of the green sheet, I just, I just think this is really helpful because it can be easily forgotten. Sorry, we're three minutes over so we'll close. But for what are we to pray? Pray that we will see this priest as God sees him. Pray that God will allow us to see the priest God given gifts. Pray in thanksgiving for his faithfulness to God. Pray for him to be strengthened in his vocation. Pray that we will accept him in his weaknesses just as God loves and accepts us in our weaknesses. Pray against temptations and pray for understanding as there can always be miscommunication and ask for clarification when there's miscommunication. I mean, I don't speak and understand the way the priest I work with speak and so I always have to, could you say more? Could you tell me exactly what you mean? Okay, close there. Sorry, we don't have more time for questions, but let's pray a glory be first of all for all of you and the good work that you're doing and then for the priest that you're working for. Okay, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be world without end. Amen. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.