CPE looks toward community for support

By KENNY KEANE, Globe staff reporter
Posted May 8, 2003

If this page were blank, it would represent the future without the Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) program. That is one example of how Father Eugene Sitzmann, pastor of Visitation of the BVM Church in Maryhill and CPE instructor, illustrates the current, critical state of the CPE program.

Father Sitzmann has been involved with CPE for 33 years, particularly at the Mental Health Institute (MHI) in Cherokee, which is where he served as chaplain and CPE educator for over 29 years before retiring from MHI on Aug. 15, 2002.

Father Sitzmann said his days of teaching CPE and of it being taught in a clinical setting have been numbered by reason of age and by changes in healthcare delivery, as far as economic priorities and technical advances, which have: greatly shortened the period of hospitalization; greatly diminished the number of in-patients/decreasing the number of local hospitals; astronomically increased outpatient services (treatment, surgery and support); fostered the "regionalization" of hospitals which focus on specialization; and dramatically increased in-home treatment and rehabilitation services.

"The patients don't stay as long, so chaplains really don't have a chance to get at people and help them with a lot of issues in their life along with the medical aspect," he said. "So the proper place for this program now is in the community. Our mission now must be to educate and inform people of that shift and draw forth their financial participation.

"We need no buildings. Students offer their facilities. We just need the salary of a supervisor. That's it. The supervisor will move to the students where they are gathered, rather than the students always coming to an institution."

Fundraising efforts for start-up of a community-based program were undertaken several years ago and have been very successful in Sioux and Cherokee counties. These two counties, along with the contiguous counties of Buena Vista, Plymouth and Woodbury, now have the opportunity to form a consortium that will receive the benefits of community CPE as start-up funding grows.

While this funding is being developed, Father Sitzmann is continuing the program by volunteering his services until his full retirement at the end of the year in 2004. Until that time, a dollar-for-dollar challenge match for endowment purposes has been offered for each dollar given to the start-up fund - up to $500,000.

"We're making progress, but we've also got a door that's starting to close here," Father Sitzmann said. "So we really need small and major gifts in order to have enough funding to not start this thing on a shoestring but when we get it started to be able to maintain it."

Those who recently participated in the CPE training see a definite need for continuing to provide this program.

"It supports a trend in the denominations where people are beginning to understand the baptismal call of all believers," said Deb Mechler, chaplain at St. Luke Lutheran Home in Spencer. "This will help equip those people who do have the kinds of gifts that really should be used. People are becoming more open about receiving help about their problems then they used to be. You have to have people to meet those needs."

Barry Thongvanh, pastor for SE Asian Ministry in Storm Lake, said CPE is something new for him, but he has already gained much knowledge from the course.

"Usually I care for our people in our own way," he said. "With the CPE I learned some more skills that I have to care for our people in the American way. I've learned a lot from this, and I plan on attending again next session."

Another CPE student, Sherry Hittle, said she sees the shortage of priests and ministers - not only in the Catholic Church but also in all other religious connections - as a reason for the program to continue.

"As lay people we need to pick that up, unite with them and do our ministering together because the priests and the ministers are spreading themselves thinner and thinner," said Hittle, a pastoral minister/hospice worker in Ida Grove. "I think as lay people we just need to recognize that baptismal call, get out there and do the work that we were given to do."

The pastor of the Church of Christ in Storm Lake, Jack Barber, was spreading himself thin with all of his different interests, but CPE helped bring more order to his life.

"I love airplanes, and I love automobiles. I have this curiosity, and I didn't realize this was causing problems in my life," said Barber, who offered his church as the location for the final session of the CPE program. "I wondered why sometimes I was so tired. I looked at myself in the mirror and I thought, 'Good gravy.' I don't need to know everything. I just need to slow down and minister to myself a bit better."

Another Storm Lake minister, Father Eriberto da Costa, said he has not planned on how he will use the skills he has obtained from CPE because he is already using them.

"If you do not live for yourself, you cannot give," said Father da Costa, minority outreach minister at St. Mary Church. "If you do not buy the idea - if you do not identify with the process or the program - you cannot give. So I'm not planning for the future. I'm using it already."

As for the future of CPE, anyone who would like more information about the effort to start a community-based training program or to contribute to the start-up fund can contact Father Sitzmann at (712) 225-2131.

"There's a timeliness in this," Father Sitzmann said. "The CPE program will end when I retire if there's no successor. So that's why we're pushing the fundraiser right now."