St. John Henry Newman to be new name for parish ministering on campus in Columbia
Previously known as St. Thomas More Newman Center Parish
Pope Francis declared the late Cardinal John Henry Newman a saint in 2019.
Now, not only will the building that is home to Catholic Campus Ministry in Columbia officially bear his name, so will the parish that encompasses it.
“One thing we’re hoping to achieve is clarity, which brings about unity, which ultimately leads to healing, which is part of our mission here on campus,” said Father Daniel Merz, pastor of the soon-to-be-renamed St. John Henry Newman Parish and of neighboring Sacred Heart Parish, both in Columbia.
The clarity comes from formally naming the parish in honor of the saint whose name people have already been calling it for decades.
“And now, as a canonized saint, St. John Henry Newman is eligible to be named the patron of a parish,” Fr. Merz stated.
Fr. Merz began seeking deeper clarity about the parish, its identity and its purpose when he arrived as pastor in 2020.
“Are we a parish?” “Are we a Newman Center?” “What kind of parish are we?” “Who do we minister to?” “Does anyone know our official name?” — these are some of the questions he set out to answer.
Sacred Heart Parish in Columbia established a Newman Club, named after Cardinal (now Saint) John Henry Newman (1801-90), for Catholic students on campus in 1948.
“Newman Center” is a general term for Catholic Campus Ministry centers throughout the United States.
Cardinal Newman was an influential teacher, writer, preacher and Catholic convert at Oxford University in the 19th century, when secularism and modernism were making significant inroads in academia.
He is one of the patron saints of Catholic education.
A new building, dedicated in honor of St. Thomas Aquinas, in honor of the patron saint of Catholic scholars, was completed on the University of Missouri (MU) campus in 1963.
Thirty years later, parishioners sought to rename the building, newly expanded, in honor of St. Thomas More, a 16th-century English statesman who was executed for refusing to renounce his Catholic faith.
Bishop Michael F. McAuliffe, second bishop of Jefferson City, agreed to the name change shortly after dedicating the current church building in 1994.
In the time since then, the parish has been known interchangeably as “St. Thomas More Newman Center Parish,” “St. Thomas More Parish and Newman Center” and other variants.
“Most people, however, continued to call it the Newman Center, and that reality persists today,” Fr. Merz stated in a 2021 letter to Bishop (now Archbishop) Shawn McKnight, the diocese’s fourth bishop. “... And now that Cardinal Newman has been declared a saint, the parish desires to embrace the saint formally, whose name has always been in our hearts.”
He noted that for the sake of history, the parish has every intent of honoring St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Thomas More with a statue or other representation in the church, as well as by naming another part of the complex in their honor.
Know thyself
Fr. Merz consulted with Archbishop McKnight about the parish’s official status and its proper name.
“Archbishop McKnight went through a process in Jefferson City and sent us a decree naming us a personal parish, as opposed to a territorial parish, and defining the persons we serve,” said Fr. Merz.
Those persons include students, faculty and staff of MU and the two colleges in Columbia (and their dependents), and anyone else who registers as a parishioner.
“For me,” said Fr. Merz, “that was a great clarification that we are a parish, a full-fledged parish, albeit a personal parish, with campus ministry as our primary apostolate.”
Discussions about the parish’s name fermented for years, beginning again in earnest in 2021.
“Especially from a campus ministry perspective, there were a lot of things we had to explain at the front end, when students would tour with their families or when they started coming here to Mass — including why we take our name from two different saints,” said Angelle Hall, the parish’s director of Campus Ministry.
Inviting young adults who are living on their own for the first time to incorporate faith and the Sacraments into their everyday lives is already challenging, “and in some ways, it was more difficult than it had to be,” said Mrs. Hall.
“Our name could definitely be confusing,” she said. “Add to that how some things we did here were different from what the students were used to at home, and you wound up with a lot of questions from students and their parents.”
Over time, pews with kneelers were installed in place of the moveable chairs that didn’t have kneelers, and the Most Blessed Sacrament was moved from a separate adoration chapel to the sanctuary.
In 2021, Fr. Merz commissioned surveys and conducted town hall meetings about what the parish should be called.
Many parishioners said they were unaware of the parish’s formal name — or even that it’s a full-fledged parish.
Following more consultation, Fr. Merz asked Bishop McKnight about changing the parish’s name to St. John Henry Newman Parish.
“We’re not a ‘Newman Center’ in the specific sense, because we minister to people of all ages, not just college students,” Fr. Merz noted. “We are a parish.”
The bishop has the authority to rename a parish, but changing the official name of a church building requires approval from the Vatican.
Fr. Merz sought approval for the name change from the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments and received it earlier this year.
Archbishop McKnight intended to follow suit with the name of the parish but was appointed archbishop of Kansas City in Kansas and decided to leave that decision to his successor.
Bishop Ralph B. O’Donnell, who was ordained and installed Oct. 28, addressed the issue with the College of Consultors on Dec. 29.
With the consultors’ unanimous approval, he agreed to change the parish’s name, although it won’t be official until he signs a decree later this month.
“So now, the building and parish have one patron saint, one identity: St. John Henry Newman Parish, with our primary apostolate being Campus Ministry,” said Fr. Merz.
“Incredible work”
Fr. Merz said the name change helps bring clarity to the parish’s mission.
“To know yourself is to be more fully able to give of yourself,” he said. “We want to be completely clear on who we are so that we can be Church for the world.”
Ministering to students, faculty and their families remains the parish’s primary function, permeating every aspect of its existence.
Fr. Merz said the parish’s unofficial motto is: “Convert the campus, convert the world.”
“That is to say, if you’re confused about who you are, we know who we are. Come be with us and we’ll lead you to the Lord, who brings clarity and conversion and mercy,” he said.
The priest pointed out some things that haven’t and never will change.
“First among these is our commitment to everything that Jesus entrusted to us,” he said. “We’re still the Roman Catholic Church. We still want to love our neighbor and support and accompany each other and walk together with the Sacraments and with the Word, the Scriptures, with justice and truth — everything that it means to be Catholic.”
One of St. John Henry Newman Parish’s goals is to foster a culture of healing, welcome and hospitality.
“Little by little, we’re trying to grow this culture of prayer and healing,” said Fr. Merz. “The clarity of identity is part of the healing process.”
Updated signs throughout the building are clear and consistent.
The reception desk has been moved to a prominent place in the building’s vestibule.
Prayer teams are available in the prayer chapel once a month after Sunday Mass.
The parish recently established a social justice endowment and hired a full-time Director of Service and Justice to facilitate helping people in need throughout Columbia and to organize public forums on such topics as the death penalty and immigration.
Solar panels will be installed atop the complex following the completion of roof work this month.
More young adults are taking part in the sacramental life of the Church, including the Sacrament of Confession, and are actively discerning possible vocations to the Priesthood or Consecrated Religious Life.
“The Holy Spirit is doing incredible work,” said Fr. Merz. “We had a record number of students going to the Awakenings retreat in October. We have 50 people preparing to be initiated into the Church through the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults.”
Father Andrew Auer, a priest of the St. Louis archdiocese, is serving as associate pastor at St. John Henry Newman Parish.
He gives spiritual direction to many students and offers occasional Masses in local fraternity and sorority houses.
“We recently had over 100 guys come to a Mass at one of the fraternities,” said Fr. Merz. “That’s about triple of what we were getting last year.”
Among colleges and universities throughout the world that welcome missionaries from the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS), the University of Missouri places sixth in the number of males participating in campus ministry.
“And of those six, we’re the only one with two male FOCUS missionaries,” Fr. Merz noted.
“All glory to God”
Mrs. Hall said she’s excited about the name change but understands the mixed feelings among some of the students and long-time parishioners.
“When we love the Church and we love our parish, and we rightfully grow in the love of a saint, it can be really hard when that changes,” she said. “There is a grieving, and we need to be sure to keep finding ways to honor that.”
But fully buying into the name many people already recognize for the parish and its ministry on campus is an aid to getting people involved.
“It’s so important for the furthering of our mission for us to be united in knowing our name, being able to talk about ourselves, knowing who we are to everyone,” she said.
“Our ministry is growing,” she stated. “But if we don’t work to support and tell people who we are so that they invest in our mission, our future progress is going to be limited.”
Mrs. Hall emphasized that campus ministry isn’t a separate part of St. John Henry Newman Parish, it’s a defining characteristic of its entire existence.
“We have students serving in every aspect of parish life here,” she said. “All of that forms them. And being able to be at Mass with people of all ages and families is so important for the formation of their faith.”
She pointed out how St. Thomas Aquinas and St. John Henry Newman both understood that a robust faith presence on campus works in both directions.
“All glory to God, wherever you find him!” said Mrs. Hall. “Whether it’s in our science lab or reading a beautiful story or seeing how chemical compounds work.
“As Cardinal Newman would say, all truth fits in the framework of Jesus, who is The Truth,” she said.
