In a Church that celebrates big families, infertility can be an isolating cross; how married couples found beauty in God's plan

(0:02) Ann Koshute discusses the vision she and her husband had of having children after they were married. Like many Catholic couples, they longed for a big family. However, as the years went on without children, the couple slowly began to grapple with the cross they carried: infertility.

(3:28) With few resources available for Catholic couples struggling with this lonely cross — apart from natural family planning or adoption resources — Ann and a close friend who also faced infertility felt called to create a new peer support ministry, Springs in the Desert.

(8:50) Ann discusses the unique challenge of infertility in the Catholic Church, in which big families are celebrated, cherished, and even encouraged. For a Catholic couple without children, Ann says, parish life can be isolating and uncomfortable. Christina Heidemann, who volunteers with Springs in the Desert, agrees.

(11:42) Christina explains her experience with what’s called “secondary infertility,” or infertility that takes place after one or more pregnancies. Christina and her husband desired to expand their family, but after two children and multiple miscarriages, they began to lose hope. Christina talks about discovering Springs in the Desert, which gave her and her husband support and hope as they pursued other options, including international adoption.

(14:15) After adopting one daughter, Christina became pregnant again. Given the complications she had faced in the past, she and her husband had a lot of anxiety, but she was able to successfully carry the pregnancy to term and gave birth to her “miracle,” a daughter, Theodora.

(16:10) Dawn and Joe Pullis discuss their journey with infertility, which began before the couple married. After a battle with ovarian cancer early in life, Dawn knew she wouldn’t be able to have children naturally. The news, while devastating, allowed Joe and Dawn to pray and discern their future together, including their eventual adoption of three children.

(20:07) Dawn and Joe discuss not having their own children, but also the beauty of the plan God did have in store for them. Over the years, their experience has helped them share wisdom with other young couples going through similar challenges.

(21:26) Ann and Christina talk about how Springs in the Desert seeks to be a community for those suffering from infertility to find peers to help guide them, resources to help facilitate conversation and prayer, and advice for pastors and lay leaders to better understand the road such couples face.

(28:01) Ann and Christina emphasize the need for a re-framing of the conversation around infertility in the Church. All married couples — regardless of family size — are called to be fruitful and holy, and there is space in the Church for every family. The women emphasize God’s love and urge couples facing infertility to place their whole trust in Him.

Reporting and narration by Gabriella Patti; script by Casey McCorry; production by Ron Pangborn

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Three missionary priests draw parallels between the work of the Gospel in far-off lands and the new evangelization in Detroit

(0:04) Fr. Stephen Mutie, SAC, a priest currently serving in Wyandotte, reflects on his first missionary assignment with the Irish Pallottine community 15 years ago in a remote and rural part of Tanzania. Born in Kenya, Fr. Mutie’s own vocation was influenced by missionaries. He discusses the unique challenges of ministering as a foreign missionary.

(5:13) Fr. Mutie describes how his flock in Tanzania was spread wide and thin, with few priests and resources to serve them. Because of these shortages, Catholics in the poor country valued the simple things like faith, family, catechesis and the Eucharist. He draws parallels to his missionary work here in the United States.

(9:32) Listeners are introduced to Fr. Jeremy Davis, SOLT, another missionary priest serving with the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity at St. Gabriel Parish in southwest Detroit. Two years ago, Fr. Davis served as associate director of a boarding school for troubled and abandoned youths in Mexico.

(12:22) Because the kids in his care often lacked parental figures, Fr. Davis found himself taking on the role of “father” more literally than he ever thought possible.

(14:44) Fr. Davis describes what drew him to the priesthood, and how the demands of his current assignment might be different, but the spiritual needs are not.

(16:37) The last missionary priest to whom listeners are introduced is Fr. Ken Mazur, PIME, whose first and only missionary assignment began in 1991 in a place far from home: Japan. While many might think of missionary work as primarily belonging to poor countries, Fr. Mazur notes that Japan, at just 1% Christian, is a fertile mission field.

(18:54) Fr. Mazur describes his adjustment period to life in Japan, which included learning a new language and culture and understanding how he could best make an impact as a priest in a small Catholic parish on the outskirts of Tokyo.

(23:56) Just like in America, Fr. Mazur talks about how little moments of witness — at a wedding, or in the context of a parish school — can plant seeds that may blossom with God’s blessings.

(26:23) Fr. Davis sums up the experience of missionary work and compares it to the charge of evangelization that all the baptized are given. Whether in Detroit or halfway around the world, the bottom line is the same: sharing the Gospel for love of Christ.

Reporting by Daniel Meloy; script by Casey McCorry; narration and production by Ron Pangborn

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Listen to ‘Detroit Stories’ on Apple Podcasts, YouTube or Spotify. Podcasts also will be posted biweekly on DetroitCatholic.com.

In a world filled with hustle and bustle, two cloistered nuns pull back the curtain on their life of prayer, silence and peace

(0:01) Mother Mary Therese of the Holy Spirit, prioress of the Discalced Carmelite Nuns of the Monastery of St. Therese in Clinton Township, recalls her first memories of cloistered life as a 7-year-old visiting a family friend who was a Carmelite nun, and how an early whimsical experience shaped what would become a lifelong vocation.

(4:34) Mother Mary Therese talks about her certainty, as a young girl, that she wanted to be a “Carmelite” — not necessarily a nun — and how her understanding of the vocation grew as she did. After high school, she joined the cloistered order and found her “forever home”: a 12-acre, picturesque monastery she now calls “heaven on earth.”

(8:06) Mother Mary Therese describes the rhythm of life and patterns of prayer, work, rest and recreation inside the cloistered monastery. She talks about the challenges the nuns face in supporting themselves, and how they seek to keep their primary task — intercessory prayer — at the forefront of their minds.

(13:05) We meet another cloistered nun, Sr. Dominic Maria of St. Michael, the 37-year-old vocations director for the Cloistered Dominican Nuns of the Monastery of the Blessed Sacrament in Farmington Hills, the largest cloistered community in the Archdiocese of Detroit. As a rare younger vocation, Sr. Dominic discusses her path to cloistered life and how some people “are astonished” at the sight of a young cloistered nun.

(15:04) Sr. Dominic and Mother Mary Therese each discuss the misconceptions surrounding modern cloistered life — namely, that it is a drab, isolated life devoid of vibrancy and fun. Both nuns insist nothing could be further from the truth.

(18:46) While silence is essential to the nuns’ prayer — and something the modern, technology-soaked world sorely lacks — Mother Mary Therese says cloistered life is also an active one filled with work, laughter, joy, reading, hobbies, games and celebration.

(24:21) Mother Mary Therese and Sr. Dominic talk about why prayer is so central to the nuns’ vocation, and how cloistered life is a special response to God’s invitation to be close to Him in all things, as radical as it is countercultural. And both say they couldn’t imagine life any other way.

Reporting by Gabriella Patti; script and narration by Casey McCorry; production by Ron Pangborn

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