Send off for KCCWer Bro Louis Rodemann - Sat. May 15 at Holy Family CW House

[Frank Cordaro]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jane Stoever <janeps...@yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, Apr 27, 2010



What: Send off for KC CWer Brother Louis Rodemann
Date: Saturday May 15
Time: 4 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Place: Holy Family CW House, 912 East 31st Street, KC MO




"Brother Louis Rodemann to Take Sabbatical from Catholic Worker House"


Christian Brother Louis Rodemann, who has provided leadership at Holy
Family Catholic Worker House for 28 years, will leave for a year-long
sabbatical early in June. Rodemann, 70, recently said he looks forward
to rest, prayer and reflection after years when the demands of the
community he served left little time for such pursuits.


Holy Family House, located on 31st Street close to Troost in Kansas
City, Mo., is known as Holy House to many who come there for a simple
breakfast, supper, companionship and basic services. A committee
planning transition for the house will host a party there May 15 to
honor Brother Louis and the three LaSallian volunteers who have lived
and worked side-by-side with him this year. All are welcome to join
the party at 912 East 31st Street, from 4 to 9 p.m.


Brother Louis came to Kansas City, Mo., in 1961 as a new member of
the Christian Brothers. He was assigned to DeLaSalle, a young men’s
high school named for Jean Baptiste DeLaSalle, the French-born founder
of the Roman Catholic teaching order.


Brother Louis said that during his many years as an educator he was
“always searching for a way, as practically as possible, to live the
message I was trying to teach.” In the early 1980s he seemed to have
found what he was looking for when he became a weekend volunteer at
Holy Family House. He first took on the task of visiting the City
Market Saturday afternoons to beg for produce the vendors had not
sold. He supplemented what the vendors gave by “dumpster diving,”
crawling into the dumpsters to salvage usable food that had been
discarded earlier in the day.


Back at Holy Family House, the staff urged him to stay to help pick
over the quantities of fruits and vegetables he had brought, some of
which, according to Brother Louis, “needed immediate radical surgery.”
The staff invited him to stay for supper, stay for prayer. Eventually
Brother Louis asked the leaders of his order if he could be assigned
to Holy Family House.


They hesitated. Christian Brothers is a teaching order, not a social
service order, they said. However, in the spring of 1982, they granted
permission for Rodemann to join the Holy Family House staff “for a
year.”


Though his work at Holy Family House has involved much physical labor,
much problem-solving and much meeting of the needs of tough, sometimes
combative, often grateful guests, he has never felt far from his
vocation. “I have always thought of myself as a teacher,” Brother
Louis said.


Holy Family House marked its 35th anniversary last summer with events
that drew hundreds of guests, former staff members and volunteers. The
house was founded in 1974 by Angie O’Gorman, who wanted to follow a
way of life outlined by American journalist Dorothy Day and French
peasant philosopher Peter Maurin. In the early 1930s, they had started
a newspaper called The Catholic Worker, a soup kitchen and houses of
hospitality where New York City’s poor could find refuge. Although
there are close to 100 Catholic Worker houses throughout the United
States, there is no one way to do it. Each house follows its own path.
Most are Catholic, embrace voluntary poverty, exist on donations,
favor pacifism, accept no government money, and serve a variety of
underprivileged and marginalized people.


Holy Family House offers a breakfast of toast, day-old doughnuts and
coffee four days a week; and supper five days a week. The evening meal
is often prepared and served with the help of church volunteers. The
house provides about 400 suppers a week. Staffers also assist guests
with paperwork for government services, prescription vouchers, offer
discounted bus passes, and winter and summer clothing vouchers. In
addition, the house offers a place to come and talk or listen. And a
porch to sit on.


Brother Louis was born on a farm near Jefferson City, Mo., the eldest
of seven children in a community where, he said, “everyone was German,
everyone was Catholic and everyone was a farmer.” His first years at
DeLaSalle, Brother Louis describes as “the beginning of my education
in an urban setting.”


In addition to answering immediate needs at Holy Family House, Brother
Louis has long been active in efforts to promote world peace and
justice. He recently helped plan the annual three-mile Good Friday
walk through downtown Kansas City, Mo., commemorating the Stations of
the Cross. In 1999 Rodemann made a Voices in the Wilderness journey to
Iraq where, he said, “as an act of resistance, we brought medicine to
hospitals and clinics” despite U.S. laws against that.


Looking back on his years at Holy Family House, Brother Louis said, “I
can’t think of a better place to be than a Catholic Worker house, to
be integrated into this life, to be stretched, to be with people who
would not be available to those not entering into this kind of life.
What’s happened is what Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin intended.”



For more info contact:
Patty McCarty,
Holy Family House
816-363-8058
holyfa...@hotmail.com

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