SSJC-WR COMMITTEE MEETING – Minutes 2019 11 09
John Paul the Great University
200 W. Grand Ave.
Escondido, CA 92025
Present: Fr. James Bankston, Fr. James, Babcock, Diane Alves, Mark Hartman, Anthony Porrello, Paul Bieber, Austin Miller
Dr. Connolly, the university president, came into the building and introduced himself before the meeting started. The meeting opened at 10:48 AM.
Opening Prayer: Pastor Paul Bieber
Chairman’s Report: Acting Chairman was Fr. James Babcock who acted as meeting moderator until Fr. James Bankston arrived. There was no chairman’s report because Fr. George Morelli was absent due to recent surgery.
Vice Chairman’s Report: There was none because Fr. James Bankston had previously let us know that he would be late.
Secretary’s Report: Diane Alves (me) passed out copies of the agenda which had been prepared by Fr. George Morelli and copies of the minutes from the previous meeting. Then I asked for and received Motion to Approve the Minutes: Paul Bieber Second: Mark Hartman. I mentioned that we have traditionally held election of two of the four elected officers in November. Discussion followed and it was pointed out that the election requirement was in the old by-laws, but not in the new. Then I asked, “Does that mean we hold office for life?” Everybody agreed that this issue needs further discussion and requested that I send out an email to the Executive Board about this problem.
Treasurer’s Report: Bob Greenwell had provided via email our bank balance $2,835.13.
Light of the East Newsletter: Jim Trageser wasn’t present but had provided us with the information that the newsletter would be ready by December 1st and that Anthony had already taken pictures of the two parishes, one eastern and one western, which would be featured. We decided the next issue should feature Holy Angels. When I mentioned that the closest Roman Catholic parish is St. Columba, I was asked if the parish/building was anything special. My answer was that it is ordinary. Then mention was made of other possibilities including Mission San Diego de Alcala, St. Didacus, and a Carmelite monastery. This is a decision we should make soon. After our meeting, I thought of something special about St. Columba. The Catholic Korean community has buildings across the street. They use St. Columba for mass.
Historian’s Report: Anne Petach is seldom able to attend our meetings due to living too far away from the San Diego area where most meetings take place and today she was unable to call in, but she had communicated by email the following answers to some of our questions for her from the last meeting:
“I do have photos from 2005 of the booth we had at the Valyermo Abbey Fair (now a discontinued event). First use of our banner. Suggest these also be included.
I am not equipped for scanning paper copies on the scale envisioned above. I can copy Word docs to CDs. I do not have “an electronic archive” – either marked “closed” or otherwise. Not even sure how to set one up. Does someone else? I do not want to have archive files permanently kept on my computer. (I’m still using Windows 7 and will need to upgrade soon).
I will save one printed copy of the Minutes that I have even though they are on the web. This is old fashioned protocol for Minutes. It may have changed universally by now and if so by all means have the whole lot digitalized. I just can’t do that myself. Big libraries use some kind of automated digitalization I believe. I would have to do it page by page in a slow old scanner and quality would be amateurish and not easily readable. Besides, I doubt I would live the decades more I’d need to do that at my speed.
There is a complete set of the print copies of the newsletter from before they became online only. And some duplicates, but not a second complete set. I suggest only keeping one set.
There is some handout material that was provided by speakers for some of the past programs.
Ecumenical/religious archive? Not as such. There are some copies of the various prayer services we used through the years for programs, and some photocopied articles from various publications that were relevant at least tangentially to programs and were set out at programs out for anyone who wanted to borrow them. I had not thought to include the articles in the archives but could send them separately to Msgr. Dennis.
I do have photos from the Orientale Lumen West Conferences that Betty Kearns had sent me and I can copy to those to CDs. Most are not captioned.
Once I have winnowed and assembled – I plan to get it down to one file box – there is the question of where it is to be stored/accessible. That can be decided much further on. At the rate I am getting interrupted by other necessities, I will be lucky to get this done by the end of the year.
In addition to the actual archives, I have what I think is a full run of Eastern Churches Journal (32 issues) though I would have to check to see if it that amounts to a complete set or not. I bought the set for my own use when Jack was selling them off. I had started indexing them but was unable (and perhaps not proficient enough) to continue and will be glad to donate them. As far as I know, these are not avail be online so the print copies might be useful for someone doing ecumenical research.”
Website Team Report: Fr. James Bankston, our webmaster had not yet arrived. I (Diane) reported that I have resolved the website problems which we discussed at our previous meeting. Among the problems caused by changes in Microsoft’s latest Windows 10 updates and builds were: The Microsoft Edge browser was rejecting our website, and printable flyers couldn’t be printed. Those Windows 10 changes required our labeling our website as https as a temporary fix. I finally phoned Microsoft. Their employee was pretty sure our problem was that Bob Greenwell’s name and address were posted on the website as a mailing address for a printable Membership Application. Changing Bob’s name to Treasurer SSJC-WR did fix the problem which was apparently caused by Microsoft’s now enforcing stricter privacy requirements than before.
Fr. Bankston had arrived. He said he would work together with Anne via phone calls and show her how to upload the historical archives to a new password protected area of the website. In additional discussion, we all decided that the archives should also be backed up at set intervals to CD or DVD (including an extra copy or two of each, with copies kept by different people).
We then discussed our web hosting which is piggybacked on a service Mark Hartman subscribes to. He said this arrangement can continue even after he moves elsewhere.
Old Business: The upcoming conference, May 30th at John Paul the Great University is now old business since it was discussed at the previous meeting. The same applies to World Youth Day.
Next Conference: Our topic will be “The Spirituality of Icons.” Two possible speakers were recommended by Fr. James Bankston. They are Andriy Chirovsky from Tucson and Damien Higgins from Redwood, CA. Chirovsky is a scholar. I believe Higgins is an iconographer. I mentioned that I would ask my Pastor, Fr. John Reimann, of St. Anthony the Great Antiochian Orthodox Church the following: Who did the frescoes in our church?
See the note after “Closing Prayer.” We were given a tour of available rooms we might choose for our conference.
I also brought up the subject of having an Eastern and a Western speaker which is our tradition; but I was told that only eastern churches have a spirituality of icons, however, some western churches do have some icons. Secretary Note: I believe retablos are western icons. They are religious folk art which are common throughout Latin America and in New Mexico.
World Youth Day: Austin Miller is promoting our involvement in this event which is a Roman Catholic event held every 3 years. He attended World Youth Day in Poland in 2016 – it was a positive experience for him. It was held earlier this year in Panama. In 2022 it will be in Portugal. Some discussion followed, and we might want to have further discussion at future meetings about 2022. Fr. James Babcock said he attended World Youth Day a long time ago when it was held in Denver. He felt that it was focused too much on the Pope and not enough on Christ.
New Business: After the newsletter which will be published soon, we need to pick another Eastern Church and nearby Western Church. Holy Angels was suggested for the Eastern Church. Then I mentioned that St. Columba is the closest Roman Catholic Church. I was asked if there was anything special about the building. I said it is ordinary. Then the suggestion was made to use Mission San Diego de Alcala located in Mission Valley and still a Catholic parish. The mission is not very far from Holy Angels and is a historic landmark.
Note: Later I thought more about St. Columba. Across the street on property that I believe belongs to them are meeting facilities for the local Korean community. They are a separate parish but have Sunday mass at St. Columba.
A good future topic for a conference was mentioned, miracles.
Next Meeting: This was not discussed
Motion to Adjourn: Fr. James Babcock was no longer chairing the meeting, so he was able to make this motion. I don’t think anyone seconded. Either I made a mistake or the closing prayer was rushed.
Closing Prayer: 11:50 by Fr. James Bankston. Then a staff member of John Paul the Great University walked with us diagonally across the intersection to their other building. We were shown rooms which might work for our conference. We like room E which was large, had 2 screens and movable furniture (apparently desks were bolted down in some of the rooms).