St. Joseph's Catholic Church, Albin Wyoming.

 

This is St. Joseph's Catholic Church in the tiny town of Albin.  Presently, Masses for this community are being heard in nearby Carpenter, rather than here.

St. Patrick's Catholic Church, Diamondville-Kemmerer, Wyoming.

 

Above is St. Patrick's Church in Diamondville, Wyoming, which serves Diamondville and Kemmerer, the two towns adjoining each other.  Below is an associated building.

Unfortunately, that's all the information I have on this locality.

Churches of the West: Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church, Casper Wyoming

Churches of the West: Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church, Casper Wyoming: This Church was put in place in the early 1950s due to the expansion of the City of Casper, and has an unusual history. The church it...

Our prior entry, done quite some time ago, lacked an interior shot.  I could have simply added it to the old post, and I likely will, but here it is as a separate entry. More detail on the Church appears in the original entry.

 

Churches of the West: Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church, Casper Wyoming

Churches of the West: Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church, Casper Wyoming: This Church was put in place in the early 1950s due to the expansion of the City of Casper, and has an unusual history. The church it...

Updates as of today's date. 

A Day of Fasting and Prayer

Bishop Bigler of the Diocese of Cheyenne has declared this a voluntary fast day for Peace in the Middle East.

Prayer for Peace in the Holy Land

The Diocese of Cheyenne is asking Catholics in the Diocese to pray for Peace in the Holy Land, and has issued this prayer.

Pray for Peace in the Holy Land

Lord God, merciful and strong,

     who crush wars and cast down the proud,

     who extend mercy and tenderness to all,

we pray to you for the Holy Land, for the people of Israel and Palestine

     who are under the grip of unprecedented violence,

     for the victims, especially the children and their families.

Be pleased to grant healing for the wounded, the release of hostages,

     protection for the innocent, and eternal peace to the dead.

To all those affected by war, grant healing, consolation, and the grace to forgive.

Almighty God,

     guide the minds of world leaders to act with wisdom, prudence, and justice,

     and to promote the common good.

Lord of Justice, help us to commit ourselves to building a fraternal world

     so that these peoples and all those suffering similar conditions of

     conflict, instability, and violence may walk together as sisters and brothers.

Help us to be peacemakers by practicing justice, dialogue, and reconciliation.

O God of Peace, who are peace itself,

     grant that those in conflict may forget evil and so be healed.

Help those who have experienced violence to forgive their enemies,

     as Christ taught us and after his example on the cross.

We pray that the whole of humanity may be reconciled as one family,

     without violence, without absurd wars, and with a fraternal spirit,

      and live united in peace and concord.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ Your Son, who lives and reigns with you

in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

Lex Anteinternet: Prayer for Peace in the Holy Land

Lex Anteinternet: Prayer for Peace in the Holy Land:

Prayer for Peace in the Holy Land

The Diocese of Cheyenne is asking Catholics in the Diocese to pray for Peace in the Holy Land, and has issued this prayer.

Pray for Peace in the Holy Land

Lord God, merciful and strong,

     who crush wars and cast down the proud,

     who extend mercy and tenderness to all,

we pray to you for the Holy Land, for the people of Israel and Palestine

     who are under the grip of unprecedented violence,

     for the victims, especially the children and their families.

Be pleased to grant healing for the wounded, the release of hostages,

     protection for the innocent, and eternal peace to the dead.

To all those affected by war, grant healing, consolation, and the grace to forgive.

Almighty God,

     guide the minds of world leaders to act with wisdom, prudence, and justice,

     and to promote the common good.

Lord of Justice, help us to commit ourselves to building a fraternal world

     so that these peoples and all those suffering similar conditions of

     conflict, instability, and violence may walk together as sisters and brothers.

Help us to be peacemakers by practicing justice, dialogue, and reconciliation.

O God of Peace, who are peace itself,

     grant that those in conflict may forget evil and so be healed.

Help those who have experienced violence to forgive their enemies,

     as Christ taught us and after his example on the cross.

We pray that the whole of humanity may be reconciled as one family,

     without violence, without absurd wars, and with a fraternal spirit,

      and live united in peace and concord.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ Your Son, who lives and reigns with you

in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

Blog Mirror: After 60 Years, Priests Who Hold Services In Yellowstone Told They Can’t Stay Overnight In Park

 

After 60 Years, Priests Who Hold Services In Yellowstone Told They Can’t Stay Overnight In Park

Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Ash Wednesday

Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Ash Wednesday: I may have never covered a bronc in rodeo, but I never missed a mark-out and I never turned-out. Turn-out is when you've signed up for a...

Lex Anteinternet: Cliff notes of the Zeitgeist Part I. Observations on current events, political, economic, religious, and otherwise.

Starting the year off with some grousing, I suppose, in the form of a blog mirror post from one of our companion blogs:

Lex Anteinternet: Cliff notes of the Zeitgeist Part I. Some Observa...: 1.  Populism and racism aren't the same thing, even if some populist are racist. Theodore Roosevelt.  He was a populist, and a progressi...

The entry it self is fairly long.  I'm only linking in the ones that are relevant here. 

Cliff notes of the Zeitgeist Part I. Some Observations on current events, political, economic, religious, and otherwise.

5.  Apparently "innocent until proven guilty" is something that nobody really believes. . . or at least it doesn't apply to Catholic clerics.

I haven't commented on this before and perhaps I shouldn't here, but I'm going to anyhow.

The Tribune has been following, understandably, the legal woes of retired Wyoming Bishop Joseph Hart now for years.  Bishop Hart was accused of sexual ickyness with male minors.

During the same period of time during which Hart has been dealing with this, three local Protestant ministers have faced the same accusations, and they all proved true. Mention of it in the Press was very brief.  No following story occurred.  Hart's story has, however, proven different.

The initial investigation lead the Laramie County authorities to pass on doing anything. They didn't see enough evidence.  The current Bishop, however, Bishop Biegler, chose to revive the matter within the church itself and that lead to it being looked at by the authorities a second time.  On that second occasion, the prosecutor in Natrona County again determined not to charge Bishop Hart with anything.  That lead to criticism, he reopened the file and, after some time had passed, he once again determined not to file charges.

The internal church matter, however, went on to some sort of tribunal at the Vatican. And now it also has determined that there's not enough there to do anything.  

With this being the case, Bishop Hart, over a period of decades, has endured and prevailed over four separate prosecutorial episodes, three at the state level, and one at hte Vatican level.

The American myth is that you are innocent until proven guilty.  Hart hasn't been proven guilty of anything. The Tribune, however, continues to treat his as if he is guilty adn getting away with it.  Indeed, Bishop Biegler isn't helping much either as, having gotten this rolling, he's still basically sending out signals that he believes that Hart is guilty and will be crediting his accusers in spite of yaers and years of such efforts having failed.  This gets to something regarding Bishop Biegler we'll deal with in a moment, but we'll note this here.

Bishop Hart gets this sort of attention as he's Catholic.  The Catholic Church has gone through a horrific episode recently, now mostly addressed, with clerics who are now all older having committed terrible sexual transgressions.  Most of these, however, seem to have arisen due to a vareity of factors that let in priests who were not there for the right reasons, although their views are ones that the press also genuinely celebrates.  Indeed, this takes us back to the culture wars item above, as Catholic clerics that are loyal to the Church's traditional beliefs and dogma are ones that the press really doesn't like.

And for that reason, it doesn't like the church itself, which is why this gets so much press but real proven accusations by protestant minister is the same readership field, do not.

6.  Bishop Biegler and the rearward gaze.

We're now a full year into a present massive crisis that has caused a crisis in the Church but to look at the Diocese of Cheyenne, you'd not know it.

The Bishop has suspended the obligation to attend Mass on what is now running up on a year.  I had real doubts about this early on, but as the pandemic deepened, I have to admit that at some point, that's valid.  As soon as the churches were opened back up, I started going back to Mass, but in the recent deepened episode, I suspended going, taking advantage of the dispensation as I had a childhood asthma condition and I really don't want to get virus, particularly with vaccinations come on so soon.

Anyhow, if you check in on the Diocese website the first thing you are going to find is a statement by Bishop Biegler about retried Bishop Hart.

Bishop Hart was the bishop here from 1978 until 2001.  I.e., he hasn't been the bishop for 20 years.  He's been retired for 20 years.  We're on our third bishop since that time.

Wyoming, as we've noted above, is a highly transient state.  There's a core of us diehards who were born here, and who will die here, and who are watching people come and go in the meantime.  And quite a few of us, although its a minority in the state's population, are Catholic.  Quite a few of the transients are too. 

Most of the people in the pews have very low interest, in this point, in the Joseph Hart saga.  It doesn't impact our daily lives whatsoever.  When Hart was last Bishop, I was 37 years old and my youngest child was a baby.  

The pandemic does impact my daily life.

During the entire pandemic, I haven't had a representative of the parish reach out even once.  I've reached in several times, but at the time the pandemic struck I'd only recently gone off of a parish council.

Indeed, the pandemic struck at a particularly bad time, in this context, for me, as I'd gone off of the council and I stepped down as a lector as the Mass time didn't work well for my spouse and both kids were headed off to Laramie.  I'd been a lector at that point for years and years, and I do miss it. But as that occurred it was also the case that the downtown parish was clearly being changed into the Hispanic parish. That's fine, but Mass times were also altered for reasons that aren't clear to me, and therefore I went across town to another parish. The entire process left me feeling a bit unmoored as the parish that I'd served at quickly became pretty unrecognizable, the new Priest had no idea who I was, the focus was on a demographic that needs to be focused on but which I'm not part of, and then the pandemic hit.

The parish I was going to did a good job at first at dealing with the crisis but then the Bishop ordered the doors closed.  I'm sure I'm just lost to where I was at, and now I'm barely known where I am.  I get that.

What I don't get, quite frankly, is why there wasn't a full scale effort to require the parishes to reach out to parishioners.  There wasn't.  Or at least there wasn't one that I could see.  And to check in on the Diocese website to learn the latest in regard to the church and the pandemic is a disappointment, as the information is hard to find.  News on Bishop Biegler and Bishop Hart is easy to find, however.

And here's the point.  In a pandemic in which our connections with our parish is now strained and souls stand to be lost, dealing with a problem that's now 20 years in our review mirror should not be front and center.

On the morality of the Coronavirus Vaccines.

This is something that you have to be pretty attuned, I think, to the Catholic world to pick up on, and to appreciate.  There's been some questioning in Catholic circles on whether its morally permissible to take the Coronavirus vaccines.

Before I get any further, let me state that at least in the Diocese of Cheyenne, where I live, it is.  Our Bishop has so declared.

Okay, how does this all come up?

Well, not the way that you might suppose, at least if you are an American. There isn't a raging debate in the Catholic World about the efficacy of vaccinations.  While that debate might exist in American society at large, where there's an anti Science tradition that's very long in standing, and which has been reamplified in recent years due to a decrease in science funding in education which was sufficiently pronounced such the standards of education could fall so low that a twit like Jenny McCarthy, who is only qualified as a big boob model, is actually taken seriously on a scientific matter (who would listen to McCarthy on anything is beyond me).  No, this topic comes up due to a long standing Catholic moral principle holding that life can only be taken by a person in self defense.

Catholics are extremely serious about this.  Much more so than other non pacifist. Catholics aren't overall pacifists, but the Church's view on when life can be taken is quite strict.  It's often highly misunderstood, in part because the majority of Christians in the world are Catholic and lots of people in every religion will fail to follow the tenants of their faith.*  And its also a standard that has evolved a bit as society and technology has evolved, while the wider facet of that being ignored has also tended to be ignored in some quarters.  Perhaps the most dramatic examples of that might be the bombing campaigns of World War Two, a war for which the Allied cause is often cited as being about as close to a "just war" as a war can be.  Be that as it may, it's nearly impossible to reconcile some of the Allied bombing efforts of the Second World War with justly fighting a war, and the use of the Atomic Bombs at the wars end almost certainly cannot be.  Be that as it may, there were plenty of Catholic aircrewmen on bombers during the war.

And what isn't at issue is a religion based disagreement with science.  Indeed, in spite of the intrusion of Protestant beliefs into the pews of Catholic Americans to some extent, the Catholic Church as a whole is hugely supportive of and a supporter of science.  Indeed, ironically, at least one of the common scientific beliefs that some fundamentalist Protestants really have trouble with is one that a Catholic cleric came up with, that being the Big Bang Theory.  Catholics generally love science.

So what's the problem here?

Well stem cells.

If you read the entry above you'll see that at least one of the vaccines was developed using stem cells at some point, but at the same time neither of the current ones used stem cells from a directly aborted baby.  Given this, the Bishop of Cheyenne has given them a pass.

But the fact that this letter was issued also means that somebody had a question about it and it had to be addressed.

This isn't a majority of Catholic Bishops, we'd note.  Whatever happened (the Jesuit magazine America claims it was due to misinformation regarding the vaccines) at least two American Bishops issued statements that condemned at least one of the vaccines. This lead to a corrective memo being issued by the United States Conference for Catholic Bishops which addressed that issue, which reads much the letter that is set out above. The vaccines are okay.  The memo also apparently cited to a pro life organization that termed the vaccines as ethically uncontroversial.

The British Catholic Bishops went further and urged their flock to get the vaccines, noting that getting them was "not a sin".

In contrast, Auxiliary Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Kazakhstan declared the vaccines morally impermissible.  And this is what makes this sort of peculiarly interesting.  

Bishop Schneider is a traditionalist and is well known in traditionalist circles.  He's an opponent of much of what was derived from Vatican II and is very outspoken.

Now, Catholics in the Diocese of Cheyenne are not obligated to follow the pronouncements of Bishop Schneider that are contrary to those of Bishop Biegler.  The Bishop in your diocese, in the Catholic order of things, is the one that you need to pay attention to on certain things and can rely upon in others.  Catholics owe their diocesan Bishop a degree of loyalty.  If you are in a diocese in which the Bishop has said its morally impermissible to receive the vaccine, you can't simply just ignore that.

But in the current Internet Fueled Age considering the views of our local Bishop has become less common in areas in which people want to pick and choose their beliefs.  Trad or Rad Trad Catholics latch on to statements like those from Bishop Schneider that fit their views and will reject them over their own Bishop.

Indeed, this has the odd impact of distorting the Catholic order pretty significantly.  Even well into the mid 20th Century Catholics were much more in tune with what their own Bishops had to say than what the Pope might be doing.  The Pope was far away and the Bishop was fairly near.  This reflected the order of the Church.  On day to day matters in the Catholic world, the Bishop was likely to be the one that Catholics heard from.

But now many Catholics tend to follow the Pope almost as if he was present in the local parish.  In reality, what the parish Priest is doing tends to be immediately important to Catholics real lives more than what the Pope may be doing, on a daily basis. But if you read Catholic commentary now, particularly that of Trads and Rad Trads, you'd get the other view.

And not completely without reason. This Pope has been upsetting to orthodox Catholics.  But that in turn as fueled a sort of hyper orthodoxy that predated Pope Francis.

I'm expecting that to develop here.

As for what I'm doing, vaccination wise, I'm receiving it as soon as I conceivably can, and I'm an orthodox Catholic.

And I think there may be another moral issue afloat here.  In this day and age there's a massive amount of scientific bogosity that's circulating in society and many Americans, at least, have come down to believing things that are absolutely false.  Indeed, on this issue, the irony is that there will be some Trads that will abstain from receiving the vaccine due to having views that are supported by pronouncement of Bishops like Bishop Schneider, who have a bit of a fan following, while other rank and file Protestant and non religious Americans will abstain as they've bought off on the blatherings of anti vaxer boob model Jenny McCarthy and her fellow travelers.

We'll deal with the strange era of anti scientific thought elsewhere on one of our companion blogs, but on an issue like this, for sincere Catholics, the issue thus becomes this.  If it takes 70% of the population to become immune from a virus to achieve "herd immunity", and if we now that the virus kills, if we refuse to participate in achieving herd immunity, are we morally complicit to some degree in unnecessary deaths?

*One of my favorite examples was one of Cromwell's lieutenants who fought to prosecute the Anglican Church and the Catholic Church but who asked for, and received, permission for his mistress to be in prison with him rather than his wife.  Granted, Crowwell's people were generally very serious Calvinist who believed in double predestination, something most who claim to be Calvinist today do not, but that's really taking that a bit far.

On the ongoing dispensation for Mass attendance

The Bishop of Cheyenne has continued his disposition to attend Mass due to the Coronavirus Pandemic.  His decree on the same is here:

First of all, I'm going to be blunt.  The Diocese of Cheyenne has done a remarkably bad job during the Coronavirus Pandemic in getting the news out on anything.  

Bad.

The Diocese seems to be of the view that Catholics in this state all check the web all the time, will log into parish websites, or maybe are in some sort of day to day communication with the parish.

St. Mary's Cathedral, Cheyenne.

They aren't.

Some are, and I can vouch for that as I was once on a Parish Council. There's a group of dedicated parishioners who are in constant contact with the Priest and their parishes, but there are a lot who very much are not.

Indeed, one of the real ironies in all of this is that Bishop Steven Biegler, who has only been in that position for a couple of years, has a fairly apparent interests in trying to reach Hispanic Catholics, who very much need to be reached.  But to understand why we have so many Hispanic Catholics here, you also have to understand that we have a high transient population, much of which is based in the oilfield.  I defended the depositions of two Mexican oilfield workers just a couple of weeks ago, and this is common.  My guess is that the Hispanic population itself here has dramatically reduced in numbers over the past year, due to the oilfield depression, but be that as it may, I am extremely doubtful that Hispanic parishioners are going to be reached by their logging into the website of the Diocese or their Parish.

To add to that, neither are a lot of average parishioners.  I haven't been contacted even once during the pandemic and I was a Parish Council member up until just before it hit, which also was just before the last Priest rotation.  My guess is that I'm probably not on the active Parish roles anymore even though its my home Parish, as I started attending an across town Parish (I'm equidistant from all the Parishes in town) when the Mass schedule was changed as part of an evident effort to make it more convenient for Hispanic parishioners.  I'm not complaining about that change, as its clear to me that they need to be reached, but when I switched where I normally go, I also started making my donations there, as I was there.   As other family members also attend there, and as its a parish that I've attended at various points in the past (as I noted its just as close as my home parish, in terms of time of travel), they recognized me pretty quickly.

I suppose my overall point is is that I have had for a long time a vague feeling that Bishops don't always understand their Diocese very well.  Our current Bishop is from South Dakota, a neighboring state, and that cuts against my argument.  The prior one was from Wisconsin and a farmer by background, and a hunter, so he did have a grasp of the nature of where he was and seemed to appreciate that (he's now in Alaska).  But cutting against that, it seems to me, are the seeming assumptions that everyone knows what is going on and everyone is checking in.  Those sorts of parishes sound more like the ones the Priests on Catholic Stuff You Should Know discuss in Denver, rather than here, but maybe that's just me.

Even if it is just me, somebody should be reaching out.  That isn't happening locally.

And as evidence of that, I only learned about the continued dispensation as the old one was running out, I think, on December 15, and I logged on a couple of weeks ago to see if my recollection was correct.  To my surprise, it had been continued.

You'd have thought that there would have been an effort to reach out to people about this.  

If there was, it didn't reach me.

So hence my complaint.

I'll further note that I was not happy with the churches closing in the first place.  I'll admit now that my view was wrong.  I was also very much unhappy with the suspension of all sacraments, which has been lifted.  I don't think completely suspending Confession the way that itw as done was the right thing to do and I don't think it should have been done.  I was nearly as glad to see the ban on Confessions lifted as I was to see Masses restored, as odd as that may seem.

When Masses were restored I started going again, but as the pandemic heated back up, I dropped back out the last few weeks. Hence the reason for my checking.

During this crisis I've learned that I miss Mass for sure and as a lifelong Catholic I've come to admire, as odd as that may seem, dedicated Protestants and Orthodox who go every Sunday not because of a church law but because they choose too. And when things opened back up, and I could go, I chose to.  My suspension the last couple of weeks is because I'm one of those folks who have "conditions".

I'm in good health, but I had asthma pretty severely as a kid and it resumed after I went to law school for a period of time. When I was a kid I had to take shots weekly, or maybe it was biweekly, for what seemed like years, although the way such recollections work probably means it was not as great of period of time as I recall.  The shots made things less worse, but not better.  Fall was always a period of agony for me until I went to university the first time, and then they oddly left for the most par.  I was aware that allergies could come and go, but I didn't expect it to occur to me.*  I was very glad they had.

And then they returned when I was in law school.  Pretty severely, in fact, and to some plant pollens I'd never been allergic to before.  That caused me to have to resort to shots once again.

That helped clear things up for years, and indeed the allergies mostly seemed to go away.  Here a couple of years ago we got a dog for the first time in our long marriage, and it was a breed advertised as hypoallergenic.  It really seems to be.  Before that, we obtained a cat as well, which we had for years.  He simply moved in.

Having the cat caused me to believe that my animal allergies, which were widespread, had likely vanished.  Cats are one of the things that I knew for certain that I was allergic to.  Prior to getting the dog I went in to be tested and, nope, all the things I'd ever been allergic to, I still am.

Why aren't I reacting to them?

I have no idea.

I do know that in the fall in a bad year I'll get sick.  I generally recognize what it is, but frankly it's very difficult to determine at the onset if its a cold, severe cold, allergies, or severe allergies.  Long experience lets me generally guess right.  Usually I only have to worry about this in the fall, as noted, and some falls, like this past one, not at all.  Usually during the winter I'll experience some mild allergy symptoms all year long, which I think is due to working in a building that's over 100 years old. There's something in it, and when its really locked up and airtight, that gets to me.  I can tell that's not a cold.

One of the things about having had a fairly pronounced asthma condition is that if you've had it, and probably early on before you knew you had it, you may very well have experienced nearly dying.  Some asthmatics experience that repeatedly.  I have.  The experience is something nearly unique to asthmatics and its something that psychologist state that they rarely will describe to anyone.  There's good reason for that, one being that its nearly indescribable.  

The best actual description I've ever seen is set out in the book Mornings On Horseback, which is about Theodore Roosevelt's youth.  TR was a severe asthmatic as a kid.  The description is right on.  What is hard to relate about it is that when a severe attack sets in you reach a point where you know that you are in real trouble and you are headed for death.  It's pretty obvious.  When you pull back out and recover you are exhausted, but also, oddly, euphoric, as you've cheated death.  Those who have been asthmatics for a period of time, if they're conditions is serious, have experienced that again and again.

You also really learn to avoid what is trying to kill you like nothing else.

Which brings me back around to this.  

Nobody ever recovers from an injury or affliction, really.  If you've had some sort of severe condition, its' done its damage.  Asthmatics that were well treated as kids usually have overcome it in part because they've been forced to develop their bodies.  It's an oddity for sure, but at 57 years old I'm in a lot better shape than most 57 years old, a byproduct in part of the way our family has always lived but also in part due to my parents making sure I was active when I was young, mostly in swimming which is a good sport for asthmatics.  But nonetheless, if you get a severe cold or flu, you remember the condition of your youth.  When the wheezes stats to set in you recall what it was like and that death was always right around the corner.  "Feeling poorly?" comes the question.  "Having a hard time breathing" comes the answer.  But in reality, you're laying on the sofa and death is in the chair across the room, you know it.

Most asthmatics also tend to become fairly fatalistic. There are those who claim that people can't imagine their own deaths and don't ever really accept that it will occur.  I think that's baloney, and in reality what that might mean is pampered modern Americans can't imagine it and always imagine that in their 80s they'll really be in their 30s, but people who have had asthma can.  Death has come and saddled you up on his horse plenty of times, and then simply dropped you back off.  You know that one day he's coming again and won't let ago.

Generally we don't hope that's earlier than it needs to be, and hence why I've sat out the past few weeks.**

I frankly feel horrible about it and I don't think I personally do well without going to Mass and experiencing Christ in the Mass.  I don't do well with alternatives. I'm hoping this is all over very soon.

I guess I understand the continuation of the dispensation, although at this point it frankly isn't worded very clearly.  It seems we have a dispensation, and I think that my concerns qualify me for it, but it almost seems to be a qualified dispensation.

But at this point, somebody really needs to reach out.  

*Indeed one of the features of having severe allergies is not only this mystery, but the common misunderstandings about it.  I retain allergies, but I've endured a lecture from a person at one time who insisted that all childhood allergies vanish, something you can't tell somebody for whom they have not vanished.

**Which brings me to hypocrisy.  I've gone in to work the entire time, which seems hypocritical, but I've also tried to avoid contact as much as possible with as many people as possible.

Centennial Postponed

St. Anthony of Padua Church in Casper, Wyoming was dedicated in August, 1920.  It had planned to celebrate that event this August.

And then COVID 19 struck:

THE 100-YEAR CELEBRATION
For The Dedication of St.
Anthony's Church Building has been
POSTPONEÐ
Due to the requirements mandated from The Health Department and the limited gathering size, the Celebration Committee moved the event to next summer with the hope more people will feel comfortable attending and the requirement of everyone needing to wear a face mask won’t exist. This will make it a more enjoyable time to celebrate the church where it all began for our Catholic Community.
We wish to thank the following sponsors for their commitment to this event, and
Thank you to all who have supported, planned, and used their time and talents on this project. Stay tuned, we will be back in 2021.

Diocese of Cheyenne partial opening up.

Lex Anteinternet: Pandemic:May 5, 2020

I noted the item from the Catholic Diocese of Cheyenne above, here's its actual letter:

Statement from Bishop Steven Biegler, Roman Catholic Diocese of Cheyenne 

These past weeks since COVID-19 descended upon us have been difficult, and the suspension of public Masses has been deeply painful. As Governor Gordon lifts restrictions on some businesses, it is natural for Catholics to have a sense of hope that we can return to a somewhat normal parish life. Nonetheless, the need to protect the elderly and those with underlying conditions continues to be a high priority. Keeping in mind that numerous parishioners, as well as many priests, are at-risk for serious health complications if they contracted COVID-19, the Diocese of Cheyenne will continue to suspend public Masses.  

Beginning May 1, the Sacrament of Reconciliation will be celebrated by appointment using six feet of distance and masks, and the Anointing of the Sick will be celebrated for serious illness or pending surgery.  

The Diocese of Cheyenne is making tentative plans to resume public Masses, Baptisms, Matrimony and funerals for a maximum of ten (10) people on May 15, then on June 1 to expand participation based on the size of the church, while observing six feet of distance between individuals or households. These plans are subject to change.  

Re-opening the churches for public Masses will happen in phases, with health guidelines to follow for the protection of the common good and to minimize the continued spread of COVID-19. The obligatory guidelines include limited attendance, physical distancing and wearing masks. Because there still is a health risk for those who attend any public gathering, the general dispensation from the Sunday obligation will remain in effect.  

As we move forward, we will continue to follow state guidelines and adjust as needed. While we move through incremental steps through the three phases of reopening, I ask for your patience and prayers. Peace in Christ,

3rd Sunday of Easter April 26th, 2020. Cathedral of St. Mary, Cheyenne, Wyoming

Third Sunday of Easter Sunday Mass - 4.26.2020 - St. Patrick's Catholic Church, Casper Wyoming.

Second Sunday of Easter Sunday Mass - 4.19.2020 - St. Patrick's Catholic Church, Casper Wyoming.

Easter Sunday Mass - 4.12.2020 - St. Patrick's Catholic Church

Easter Vigil 2020

Easter Vigil, April 11, 2020.

St Patrick's Catholic Church Live Stream