Father Bruce Riebe is the first full-time priest for the Byzantine Catholic Outreach of Iowa, located in Muscatine. He shows a visitor the ornate altar in the outreach’s sanctuary.
By Barb Arland-Fye
The Catholic Messenger
MUSCATINE — The exterior of the modest one-story building that serves as the worship center for the Byzantine Catholic Outreach of Iowa contrasts with the vivid sacred space inside, adorned by images of Mary, the saints and Jesus. Inside, Father Bruce Riebe, a Byzantine Catholic priest, opens the Holy Doors of the iconostasis (wall of icons) for a visitor to see the ornate altar in the sanctuary.
Father Riebe is the first full-time priest for the tiny but enthusiastic congregation of 30 people (18 children and 12 adults) who hopes that his ministry and their collective outreach will help the community to grow into multiple parishes throughout Iowa.
The Byzantine Catholic Church is a Church of the Eastern Tradition while the Roman Catholic Church is of the Western Tradition. Twenty-three Eastern Catholic Churches (from the Holy Land, Eastern Europe and elsewhere) are in full communion with the Bishop of Rome. The Western and Eastern traditions differ in their celebration of liturgy, ecclesiastical discipline, Canon Law and spiritual traditions. St. John Paul II described the two traditions as a pair of lungs that breathe together as Church.
Established in 2014, Byzantine Catholic Outreach of Iowa is a ministry of the Eparchy of Parma based in Independence, Ohio. Bishop Robert Pipta leads the eparchy (Greek for diocese) that encompasses most of Ohio and 11 states west of it. He is a friend of Bishop Dennis Walsh and was among the concelebrating bishops for his ordination and installation Sept. 27 at Sacred Heart Cathedral in Davenport.
Preserving unique tradition
Bishop Walsh told The Catholic Messenger that he plans to talk with Bishop Pipta about the Iowa outreach community this week while both are attending the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Fall Plenary Assembly. “The Church is asking that we bishops support the Eastern Catholic Churches,” Bishop Walsh said. “A lot of times, the Latin Catholics don’t realize that Eastern Catholics exist, that they have their own unique identity and their own liturgy.”
Bishop Walsh appreciates the richness of the Byzantine Catholic liturgy, which includes lots of incense, bells and chanting. “It’s really quite beautiful.” He said he would do “anything I can to help them preserve their Eastern tradition.”
Father Riebe previously served in the Cleveland, Ohio area for 29 years before accepting a temporary assignment in the Chicago area with Annunciation Byzantine Catholic Church in Homer Glen, Illinois. The parish’s pastor, Father Thomas Loya, is administrator of Byzantine Catholic Outreach of Iowa.
Both priests served the outreach community in a temporary rotation of Byzantine Catholic priests from the Chicago and St. Louis area before Bishop Pipta assigned Father Riebe to Iowa full-time Aug. 1. The faithful come from Davenport and Moline (Illinois) in the Quad Cities and Muscatine, Victor, Wellman and Washington (Iowa), he said.
“I think, even as a kid without even knowing it, I have always appreciated and valued the rich liturgical customs of the Byzantine Catholic Church,” Father Riebe said. “Later, I have come to realize as a priest the uniqueness of having smaller worshiping congregations and the community that this forms. The vision for the Byzantine Catholic Outreach of Iowa is certainly to grow the congregation. We need numbers in order to be viable. The enthusiasm is there. Part of the vision would also be to identify cradle Byzantine Catholics, who now live in eastern Iowa and have been without their church. We want to serve them.”
Planting seeds
“We sent one of our best guys out there,” Father Loya told The Catholic Messenger. Father Riebe is “energetic, capable … and not afraid to work. He was very effective as a pastor. He has all of those pastoral gifts.” The Iowa outreach’s members are “very eager to be a part of this. They’re willing to sacrifice. They’re kind of ‘all in.’” Fathers Loya and Riebe, both of whom participated in Bishop Walsh’s ordination and installation Mass, consider his close ties to Byzantine Catholics a blessing.
In Ohio, Father Riebe served as a pastor of the largest parish in the Parma Eparchy with a congregation of 300 families (about 600 people). In Iowa, “This is mostly a grassroots, ground-level approach,” he said. “We need to reach out not only to Byzantine Catholics but to do grassroots evangelization…. We need to do our part to get the word out that we exist.” In the meantime, the Eparchy, Annunciation Parish and contributions from the Iowa outreach community support the ministry.
Byzantine Catholic spirituality often draws people of other traditions, such as Adam and Lynsey Kemner who live on Muscatine’s outskirts and are parents of 10 children. They were instrumental in founding Byzantine Catholic Outreach of Iowa, which started out in West Liberty before moving temporarily to St. Wenceslaus Parish in Iowa City and then to Muscatine. The faithful of St. Wenceslaus “were really kind to us,” Father Loya said. Now Bishop Walsh is helping the outreach community search for its own home in a more populous, central location.
Adam Kemner grew up in the Roman Catholic Church and Lynsey Kemner in the Nazarene Church. Both felt drawn to the Byzantine Catholic Church during college. She joined just before they married and he joined just afterwards.
Father Bruce Riebe explains the meaning of the Holy Doors of the Byzantine Catholic Outreach of Iowa, which open up to the ornate altar in the sanctuary.
The cycle of faith
The Byzantine Rite “treats everything as permeated with the Holy Spirit, with God’s active presence, and thus treats everything symbolically,” Adam Kemner said. “Every hour of the day has its own meaning, every day of the week has its own commemoration, every calendar day has saints (usually many), and besides the pre-Lenten, Lenten and Paschal seasons, there is an eight-week cycle of hymns that repeats. This gives a cycle that is like the inner workings of a clock … that hold different themes together in new dynamic tensions that hold the events of Christ’s life, the lives of the saints, the dogmas of the Church and our own lives in different perspectives.”
The family’s involvement in Byzantine Catholic Outreach of Iowa “is pretty deep,” said Adam Kemner, who makes the leavened bread for Eucharist and leads services such as Vespers and Matins when Father Riebe is absent. Adam Kemner’s wife and oldest daughter take lead roles in singing and in Sunday school. Two of his sons serve for Father Riebe and together the family makes sure the chapel is open and that someone is available to help with services.
Adam Kemner’s vison for Byzantine Catholic Outreach of Iowa is to have parishes “within reasonable distance of all Iowans, as well as men’s and women’s monasteries, and maybe several intentional communities. Our parishes are small and function best when small (90-150 people).”
“We offer a form of Catholicism that can be more rigorous in prayer, ascetical discipline, theological and integrative of the whole person that appeals to many people,” he said.
About Byzantine Catholic Outreach
Byzantine Catholic Outreach of Iowa, Eparchy of Parma of the Ruthenians
Address: 1506 Isett Ave., Muscatine
Services: Saturday Evening: Vespers 5 p.m.; Sunday: Matins 9 a.m. confession and Office of Communion; Divine Liturgy, 11 a.m., fellowship afterwards; Sunday school/adult catechesis; Wednesday: Vespers, 5 p.m.; Feast days: Vigil Vesperal Divine Liturgy, 6 p.m.
Social media: Divine Liturgy also offered via livestream on Facebook.
Contact: iowaoutreach@parma.org; (website) byzantineiowa.org; phone: 440-227-5037.
Fr Bruce is an amazing priest who really cares for the future of our Church and its people. Having been under his guidance for over 29yrs I can say he is the best a Congregation could hope for and I think Fr Bruce is the one to make it happen Prayers for all.