08. GROW THE CHURCH IN NEBRASKA

Newman Centers play a key role in helping young people discern vocations to the priesthood, holy marriages, and religious life. A diocese with a cadre of young priests spread throughout its churches, families with children filling the pews, and religious sisters and brothers wholly devoted to the Lord and service of others…is the very definition of a thriving Church. This is our particular hope for each of Nebraska’s three dioceses. 

For example, the St. Thomas Aquinas Newman Center in Lincoln has helped men from Kearney and other places across Nebraska to discern their vocations to priesthood. The St. Teresa of Calcutta Newman Center in Kearney has helped men from Lincoln, Omaha and other places across Nebraska to discern their vocations to priesthood, etc. Young couples with ties to all over the map of Nebraska are choosing to get married at Newman Center churches because those churches are meaningful to them in special ways, even if they are not from that specific place. 

The pieces form the whole. In fact, each of Nebraska’s Newman Centers–Lincoln, Omaha, Kearney, Chadron and Wayne–are points of light that together help to shine the “Light of Christ” ever more brightly throughout the entire Church in Nebraska.