Video crew interviews Bishop Kemme

 

The drone seemed out of place as it hovered and flitted around the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception Wednesday, Aug. 28. But the subsequent video it will provide will fit perfectly in a series that will highlight the beauty of the cathedral and catechize about the bishop and the faith.

Monsignor Kieran Harrington, president and chairman of the DeSales Media Group, visited the Diocese of Wichita with a video team to interview Bishop Carl A. Kemme and to capture images of the 107-year-old church that houses the bishop’s chair.

The images and audio will eventually be part of a series of 22-minute videos called “The Chair” that will be released in about a year.

The series is a conversation with contemporary apostles, Msgr. Harrington said.

“It’s really an opportunity to come to beautiful places and to talk about faith because in the church today, very often, there are so many other things which we are talking about but are really dispiriting,” he said. “This is an opportunity through beautiful things, which kind of lift the soul up…to talk about those things which ultimately motivate us and brought us to Christ and brought us to him into his love, to experience his love.”

Msgr. Harrington, who arrived in Wichita after a stop in Salina, is also the vicar for Communications for the Diocese of Brooklyn, New York, and the rector of the Co-Cathedral of Saint Joseph in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.

The project is a way to talk about the faith in beautiful places, he said, and a way to understand how the church has grown here in the United States in general, and Wichita in particular, adding that the vibrancy of the faith is evident in Kansas and in the heartland.

Beauty is a way of engaging the faithful, Msgr. Harrington said.

In the Northeast, many have abandoned their faith, he said. “What’s interesting is if you leave your church doors open, people will walk in and they will just spend time in the church. And while they may not like the (Catholic) church, if you try to close a church, they go crazy because they’re very beautiful places and people are attracted to beauty.”

The challenge then is how do we allow beautiful places to speak to people so that their hearts and minds are raised to God, he said. “That’s part of why we want to have conversations in beautiful places. You know, the bishop’s chair is the seat of his authority.”

A cathedral is not his office, Msgr. Harrington said, it’s a church, with an altar, a Eucharistic table.

“It’s important that we have this conversation, particularly now in the life of the church, especially given the fact that the office of bishop is so misunderstood,” he said, adding that the bishop is an apostle, a witness to the faith.

Msgr. Harrington said he and his crew are going across the country videotaping cathedrals, places in the dioceses, and interviewing bishops. They have completed over 30 visits and have 60 more planned before the end of the year.