Save Humphrey St. Francis Flyers

08/05/2025

07/31/2024

Very interesting read, worth the time!

The spiritual life of the ordinary Catholic in America is fed by the ordinary Catholic parish in America. What nourishes the life of that parish?

07/22/2024

“The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long that nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was... The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”—Milan Kundera (Photograph by Louis Monier)

07/22/2024

Sounds familiar... maybe our leadership should take notice?

🗣 Calling for Transparency! 🗣

We have been receiving mixed messages regarding the name of our school. The bulletin implies a name change, yet the school continues to be referred to as St. Matthias School. Employees have informed us that the name will not change until all appeals have been exhausted.

Why has this not been clearly communicated? Transparency is crucial for our community, and we deserve clear and consistent information. Let's come together and seek the answers we need.

07/22/2024

I would highly encourage attendance at this meeting! Bring questions and concerns! This is the first time a representative will be here from the Archdiocese! Fr. Scott is amazing, but their are tough questions that need to be addressed! Please get these discussions started, questions written, and let your voice be heard! I don't know if he will bring the rest of his staff with him (Vickie Kauffold, etc.), but they may also be in attendance fyi!

07/01/2024

The Vatican has officially responded to our formal appeal! As we can see, they are still in the process of examining and reviewing our appeal. With this letter wouldn't it make sense for the Archdiocese to halt their decision to spend the money to close schools, rebrand, etc. until the Vatican decides on this issue. Why do we continue to spend precious money that could be used in so many better places? If Church leadership truly cares about the well-being of their parishioners, they would wait for the decision from the Vatican, rather than trying to rush and force something through that could be overturned? Throughout this whole process, nothing was ever truly examines, thought through from conception to finish, but rather only forced by rash decisions from Archdiocese leadership.

05/13/2024

This was written some time ago and obviously had no impact on the decision.
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An Open Letter to Archbishop George J. Lucas

Dear Archbishop Lucas,

You do not know me and my guess is that, if you did you wouldn’t like me, for I am one who will consistently voice my opinion to authority figures, regardless of who they are, if I believe that they are doing something wrong. In this case, you would be that authority figure.

I was a member of the St. Francis teaching and coaching staff in the late 70’s and early 80’s. At that time, myself and my assistant coaches, turned around the football program and set the foundation for success in future years. St. Francis and the community have always held a special space in my heart and soul, even after many years have passed.

I am sending this “open letter” to you and also some newspapers, in the hope that they will publish such. We shall see. The subject of this letter is a complaint pursuant to your plans for Humphrey St. Francis Jr./Sr. High School and Lyndsay Holy Family High School. I believe your current plan to force a consolidation of these schools is an exceptionally bad decision. In looking at the Summary Findings from the meetings that have been held, I can see no great support for this plan. Actually, what I see is a tremendous amount of opposition to this plan. I do not know when or why it started, but there is a great amount of animosity between these two schools. This can certainly be evidenced in the decision of Holy Family to coop in athletics with Humphrey High School and not St. Francis.

I note that your reasons for doing so are the scarcity of priests and the shortage of teachers. You can throw out the priest shortage issue in this case, for that is your problem, not the schools. There has been a teacher shortage for years. In my 15 years as a school administrator, some of which was in rather large high schools, I never had to hire an uncertified teacher even though some of the areas where I was a building principal were very difficult areas to find teachers. In my mind, the responsibility of finding good teachers is that of the building principal. As I said, I know it can be done, for I have done it. It takes time, a very aggressive approach, money and an ability to think about recruiting in a manner in which most people don’t. By my count, there are 246 Catholic Colleges and Universities in the United States. I have to believe that some of them offer teacher education programs. Possibly you should start by contacting them, as a way of recruiting teachers.

During my studies for my Masters in School Administration and my Doctorate in School Leadership, much was discussed about leadership styles. One of the most onerous of those styles is the “pseudo-democratic dictatorship.” In that style of leadership, a person has meetings, which really just amount to “dog and pony shows,” and collects suggestions from those who will be affected. However, they really never intended to use any of it, for the leader has already made the decision beforehand. It is brutally apparent that this is your leadership style in this matter and you should be ashamed of yourself for doing so. From what I have discerned, you personally have never attended any of the community meetings concerning this matter. Instead, you delegated representatives to go and face the heat for you. This is not what a real leader does.

In the communications that I see on the St. Francis Parish website, I see that school names and mascot suggestions should be sent to you, for your consideration, to be yet another unilateral decision made by you. Probably the most disturbing sentence that I have seen was in a note that you sent to Father Stan; “Those entities will cease to exist.” I find it appalling that you would use such a crass statement in this matter. If this is not a quote from someone exercising dictatorial power, I don’t know what it is. I hope that you don’t use that statement during memorial services for a deceased individual.

Many times, people say, well you give us complaints, but you offer no solutions, so here is the best solution. Rename the school St. Francis Central Jr/Sr High School. This even appears as the number 1 option in the letter from Vickie Kauffold, Superintendent of School, in her letter of May 22, 2023. The only difference is adding “Central” to the school name. Keep Flyers as the mascot, for this is not a mascot like Bobcats, Rams, Mustangs, or the like. The Flyers mascot was chosen to memorialize two Humphery residents, who died in World War II. As far as I am concerned, changing that name is an insult to the memory of those brave men and it is unconscionable to even suggest doing so.

You profess to be doing this for the betterment of Catholic Education. Instead, it will hurt Catholic Education in that area, for I am guessing that the majority of the Holy Family students will not transfer to St. Francis. Therefore, the only result of this will be damaging the Lyndsay community and hurting Catholic Education.

I am sure that you will pay no attention to the contents of this letter, for that is the type of leader you are. However, I know the families of St. Francis and I am sure that none of them would be so blunt as I have been in this letter, for you a church authority figure. That is why I am writing this. If you continue with your present, predetermined plan, I am sure that it will be met with disaster, or as some might say, everything will go to hell.
Sincerely,

Mark A. Neish, Ed.D.

05/10/2024

05/04/2024

Wish Vickie would be as willing to discuss Catholic school support in the Archdiocese of Omaha! Two communities who have supported Catholic education in their communities for over 100 years can't even get a phone call answered.. seems a little hypocritical for a post two months prior to closing 2 Catholic schools in rural Nebraska?

05/04/2024

Sounds familiar!

Text: Why are you being so divisive?
We are not being divisive but rather fighting for our rights to exist. We would support St. Anthony’s fighting for their rights to exist and support any parish that wishes to remain open. This isn’t about dividing the community but rather recognizing that we serve distinct populations and that is okay. Not all Catholic churches or communities are the same. In fact, there are parishes that are even closer physically than ours, St. Catherine’s and Christ the King are an example, that serve very different populations and have not been forced to merge due to distance. We have joined some of our programs already with St. Elizabeth and are happy to continue to collaborate. However, we need to remain independent to protect the community we serve as well as the church and school.

04/27/2024

The recurring theme that keeps being presented by some outside of this sphere is: “All of this over a name change!” This couldn’t be any farther away from the truth. We are asking for accountability, transparency, but more so, active dialog. And the sad truth is that we are lucky because this temporarily postpones our fate, unlike that of so many others so close to us, and sadly throughout the United States. The Archdiocese stated this move to dissolve two schools is because of the needs of the future, yet our Church leadership believes that closure of 1000s of Catholic parishes and schools a year will lead to a reversal in the downward trend of the Vocation of Priesthood and stress put on our Pastoral community, even though priests are consistently asked to go above and beyond what the true duties of a religious leader should be.

And so we bring the other agenda, one that has happened and is currently happening very close to home. There are families in our St. Francis parish that have firsthand knowledge of the dissolution of their parents and grandparents parish just 11 miles north of Humphrey, St. Francis de Sales, Schoolcraft. You can read all about it here: https://www.facebook.com/saveourparishes/posts/122138003264053561?ref=embed_post

But to make a story short, St. Francis de Sales was closed because of lack of congregation. They were self-sufficient, asking the diocese for nothing financially. They were still forced to close. Upon that notice, they had asked the Archdiocese to purchase the Church that they and their ancestors built and paid for from the ground up to keep for special occasions for the members of the congregation. Instead, the Archdiocese razed the Church and sold the land. The sad truth is that it is not a one of a kind story. Ask our neighbors to the west in Elgin what they are currently going through! Then dive farther down the rabbit hole. We were lucky enough to have a page reach out and share our message, (https://www.facebook.com/saveourparishes) Save Our Parishes. The loss of history and lack of forward vision from our leadership is disheartening.

St. Francis has been synonymous with Humphrey since the village of Humphrey was incorporated. Our true goal at Humphrey St. Francis is to provide a Catholic education that will raise our children to have a well-rounded education that allows them to succeed not only in the world, but to be stewards of their faith to others throughout their life. A name change shouldn’t dictate why someone not from Humphrey would send their children to the school. It should be a reflection of the reason why they do send their children: the value they see in this Catholic education. I feel it is totally inappropriate to force parishes in our cluster to fund a school against their will, but according to the new transition team, that is the answer. If an entity (or education) is worth what it costs to stay open, then the hope is that these parishes and parents would see the value in the entity and also fight to help keep it going. Forced coercion solves nothing in any situation. Portraying the value of an education at Humphrey St. Francis, from our amazing educators who continually put countless hours in to develop our youth and years of service to our community, should be the selling point. And from the narratives heard at the town hall meeting, experiences from those who have sent their children from outside of our town and Catholic faith to HSF were amazing to hear. I think everyone in our parish and school welcomes and would love to see more children from our cluster parishes decide to start or continue their education in our Catholic school. We would welcome their tuition payment, because they have made a conscious effort and it was their decision to send their kids to Humphrey St. Francis, because they believe in our goals and trust in our process. The sad truth stated by Fr. Stan is if they don’t pay, they’ll close. Is this the easy route by the Archdiocese to water the parishes out in our family?

Again, a mascot name couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s the sad realization that everyone is an ink line away from being buried, and a century and a half of history gone… and or hope for the future isn't just 10 years down the road, it's generational, it's the hope our ancestors saw!