Catholic Life Ministries

Dear Friends, grace and peace!

We began working in ministry in the Catholic Church in August, 1981. I was working at a Seattle shipyard, clearly a job for which I was not gifted, when I was offered a job as the parish youth minister at my childhood parish, St. Mary Magdalen, in Abbeville, LA. I worked with youth; Lori and I worked with young couples and families. Our ministry partnership has lasted for 45 years, taking us from Louisiana to Maryland, to Seattle where CLM was born in 1990 (see below).

In discernment with our CLM Pastoral Board, we’ve decided that this will be our last year of ministry through Catholic Life Ministries. You have been faithful and generous in your support of the Fontanas and CLM. Through workshops, retreats, and family camps focusing on faith and service, through written essays, spiritual direction, and counseling, we have strived to empower people of all ages to “proclaim the Gospel with their lives, using words when necessary.” 

Will you support us for one more year of ministry through your prayers, financial support, and  shared wisdom? Your support enables us to publish reflective essays, offer marriage preparation and enrichment, direct retreat days of prayer and study, and present workshops on Scripture and Catholic life. Robert also counsels and gives spiritual direction to couples and individuals, offering clients a sliding scale according to their ability to pay. We are most grateful for your many years of encouragement and support. Thank you! In turn, we commit ourselves to do very competent work and to pray for you always.

(To donate to CLM go to: https://www.catholiclifeministries.org/donate) Love and prayers, Lori and Robert

“Rob, why did you start CLM?”  “We did it for the money!”

By the summer of 1990, I had been working in ministry in the Catholic Church for nine years. Living in Seattle, Washington, I was working as a parish youth and young adult minister. With five children to house, clothe, feed, and educate, we were not making ends meet on a ministry salary. What to do? One of my brothers had a Masters in Religious Education, hoping for a lay ministry career. But he decided he could not support his family on a ministry income and left lay ministry for a career in financial services. Was it time for me to do the same?

I have to admit it was not entirely the fault of the institutional church that I and other lay employees made such inadequate salaries. I was part of the problem. When I was first offered a ministry job, the salary offered was half of what I was making as an unskilled union worker in a Seattle shipyard. I did not like the shipyard job. I didn’t have the skills for it, and I wanted passionately to work in ministry. I took the youth ministry job.

Lori and I wanted a simple, modest life-style in the spirit of St. Francis of Assisi. We moved to my Louisiana hometown, moved into a low-income racially mixed neighborhood, and rented a small house for $50 a month. I was overjoyed to be able to work in ministry and approached it much as did the Catholic sisters of old: “pay me as little as possible; work me as much as is needed.” Learning how little my salary was, a woman working for the diocese told me: “Live as simply as you and your wife want to live, but the Church has a responsibility to pay you a just wage.” She was right; I was wrong, something I had to learn the hard way. I wrongly assumed that if our material needs changed, the pastor would gladly increase my salary. Was I wrong!

When our third child was born, she had some medical  issues that required visits to a variety of specialists, one even suggesting exploratory brain surgery. We had health insurance, but it required us to pay upfront the for tests and then seek reimbursement. We were sinking financially. I finally approached the pastor – whom I had known since high school and who had sponsored my going to the seminary – and asked for a raise of $50 a month.

I remember his response like it was yesterday. “Oh no, no, no. We had an agreement for the salary you are getting. If I give you a raise, I have to give everyone else a raise.”

His response held no compassion, no room for any type of compromise to help me “afford” to continue as a lay employee in the church. This conversation served to pop my “illusion” that my clergy employer would “take care of us.” It was my job to argue for a just salary (and to educate the clergy on their duty to pay a just salary).

Eventually, I did get a salary increase, but only after an   influential parishioner, who unbeknownst to me, spoke to the pastor. That began my real education as a layperson working in ministry. The clergy with whom I worked were either incapable of or unwilling to acknowledge the financial challenges of a family man working in ministry. Over years, I gained experience and training, earning a Master of Theological Studies and later a Doctorate of Ministry. Simultaneously, I grew in courage to challenge my clergy bosses to not only pay me a salary that will grow with my growing family (family is a very Catholic value!) but also one that increased with my education and professional expertise.  

Our first three years of ministry were in South Louisiana. It became clear to me that I needed more education if I were to continue in a ministry career. I asked our friend, Fr. John Edmunds, ST, if there was a future for lay people in ministry. “Yes,” he said, “if you are willing to relocate.”

With Fr. John’s recommendation, I received a scholarship to the graduate program in theology at the Washington Theological Union, Silver Spring, Maryland. With our 3 little children in tow, we relocated to Sykesville, Maryland, where I worked as the parish youth / young adult minister at St. Joseph Church while attending graduate school.  5 years and 2 more children later, I graduated with a Masters in Theological Studies, and we moved to Seattle to be near Lori’s family. I got a job as the youth and young adult minister at Holy Rosary Parish, West Seattle.

Even 40-some years ago, Seattle was an expensive city in which to live, particularly on a ministry income. After only six months working at Holy Rosary, I realized that I would have to supplement my lay ministry income OR find a new career outside of the church.

My brother urged me to join him at the financial service firm where he was thriving. I wasn’t convinced; it would not be a good match for my gifts. Perhaps I could teach at a Catholic school, but teachers were paid an even lower salary.

It was dawning on me that we needed an organization committed to us in the same way a diocese was committed to its clergy and a religious order was committed to its members. As I shared this idea with friends, I was also looking for work outside of Seattle. I was offered jobs at Catholic parishes in Lewistown, Idaho, and Newport,   Oregon, each about a seven-hour drive from Seattle. Ugh. These cities were so far away from the Seattle area after we had moved to Seattle to be near family. What to do?

Friends, led by a close friend, Susan Bourgault, stepped forward. They wanted to put a down-payment on this  organization that I had been talking about. They stated they were enriched by the ministry which we (Lori and I) provided, and they did not want to see us leave. They made commitments to sponsor us with monthly donations for the next six months to see if we could get this ministry up and running. But if we had to move away, so be it.

We stayed. With their financial support, sage advice, and much prayer, we formed Catholic Life Ministries NW (CLM), were approved for non-profit status, and began hosting retreats for adults, Taize prayer services, small group faith sharing, and family camps. Initially we saw CLM as a part-time ministry to supplement my work in the institutional church setting. Then in 2005, I began working for CLM full-time. Lori began as office manager, editor, writer, and occasional speaker.

So, why did we begin Catholic Life Ministries? We did it for the money! But, not really! We did it because we   wanted to continue to work in lay ministry, serving God’s   people with the gifts we’ve been given.