Neillsville Native to be Ordained as Deacon on Saturday, Final
Friday, April 5th, 2013 -- 9:12 AM
-Tomorrow Nate Kuhn of Neillsville will be ordained as a deacon in the Catholic Church at a ceremony in LaCrosse at the Cathedral.Nate explains what will happen tomorrow and his duties as a deacon.
"On Saturday, I'll go down to La Crosse, I actually have school this week so I have classes, but I'll go to La Crosse to the Cathedral which is the main church for this area of the dynasties. I will go before the bishop and he will ask me certain questions whether I'm prepared to make the commitment to the deaconin, some see it as a priest life if you will, and you can do alot of things a priest does, but you can't do everything. A deacon can preach on sunday mornings and baptize people. They can witness marriages. Only the priest can recognize mass and preform some of the other sacraments like confessions and things like that. A deacon is a step towards the priesthood. It's not all the way there, but it's close."
After assisting Father Varkey at Mass on Sunday at St. Mary?s in Neillsville, Nate explains what happens in the next year leading up to his ordination as a priest.
"I'll help out on Sunday and do the things a deacon does on Sundays. And then I'll actually have to go back to class. My schooling isn't done. This is actually my 7th year. I still have a whole year after that before my ordination to the priesthood. Obviously I'll have this summer, I'll have an assignement. I'm actually spending time at a hospital, working as a hospital chaplin with the hospital chaplin program. Other than that, I'm in school taking classes until ordination which will be June of 2014."
One might think that since Nate is from Neillsville he would be assigned as a priest in Neillsville, but that is not the case.
"People usually don't get assigned to their home parish. There's a couple of good reasons for that actually. I grew up here, people know me. So for me to stand before the people and say 'this is what you need to do.' People can say, 'well, I knew him when he was a kid and he was always a troublemaker so I can't take him seriously.' It happens sometimes where we get assigned to our home parishes, but we usually go other places."
Nate will be the first young man ever ordained as a priest from St. Mary?s Parish in Neillsville in June of 2014.
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