Kateri Northwest Ministry Institute
The Kateri Northwest Ministry Institute continues to meet once a month, September to May, with about fifteen to twenty participants each session. December, January, and February we meet only on Zoom, but otherwise at Immaculate Heart Retreat Center in Spokane. Jen Edgren pulls it all together to welcome participants who come from the Spokane area, the Colville and the Yakama Reservations in Washington, from our own Umatilla Reservation in northeast Oregon, from the Nez Perce Reservation in Idaho, and from the Flathead (Salish/Kootenai) and Blackfeet Reservations in Montana. Some who can’t travel join us on Zoom.
Maureen Foley-Bensen started out teaching scripture with Kateri in the late eighties when Frs. Dick Mercy and Tom Colgan founded the Institute. She has rejoined us in the last six years teaching Exodus and the Prophets. She has been teaching Isaiah 2024 to 2026, revealing to us in a powerful way how the tribal origins and worldview of the Hebrew people mediate the intended meaning in these ancient scriptures. It slowly but surely has become obvious that western scholarship has been blind to these dimensions of scripture, dimensions which are essential context for understanding the minds of those who handed on the original stories, those who wrote them down, and those who redacted them and compiled them in the form we have them today.
We are also very blessed to have Fr. Tom Colgan. He and Rose Morrison work together right now helping us understand the power, the significance and tradition of dreams as channels that God uses to communicate with us. Rose also leads us through the very insightful book on “Servant of God: Nicholas Black Elk” by Michael Steltenkamp. Black Elk was still alive when Rose was a young girl on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Marcella Adolph is gifted with a charism that interprets for us the different stories of women in scripture written by Edwina Gately. It is a rich day of learning and sharing each month, for which I am very grateful. – Fr. Mike Fitzpatrick, S.J.
