Father Bruce Riebe stands near the altar at Byzantine Catholic Outreach of Iowa in Muscatine in this file photo.
By Barb Arland-Fye
The Catholic Messenger
A larger population base that draws many more worshippers led the Byzantine Catholic Outreach of Iowa to center the ministry in Des Moines, its first full-time priest told The Catholic Messenger.
Father Bruce Riebe celebrated the final Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom according to the Byzantine Rite of the Catholic Church on July 13 in Muscatine. Beginning Aug. 17, the Divine Liturgy will be celebrated every third Sunday at 4:30 p.m., in the Sacred Heart Chapel of St. Patrick Catholic Church in Iowa City. All are welcome. Anyone with questions may call Father Riebe at 440-227-5037.
The Byzantine Catholic Church is among 23 Eastern Catholic Churches (from the Holy Land, Eastern Europe and elsewhere) that 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.
In 2014, the Eparchy of Parma, based in Independence, Ohio, established the Byzantine Catholic Outreach of Iowa. 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 last fall.
Bishop Pipta “made the decision from a ‘position of strength’ to shift to Des Moines, where I have been holding monthly services with a good showing of people,” Father Riebe said. “However, I will be ‘reaching back’ to Eastern Iowa with a once-a-month liturgy.”
For most of its time in eastern Iowa, the Byzantine Catholic Outreach of Iowa offered the Divine Liturgy at least monthly, depending on the availability of a Byzantine Catholic priest. The frequency increased to weekly (with the same priest) in 2024, Father Riebe said.
The outreach began in St. Joseph Catholic Church in West Liberty before moving into St. Wenceslaus Catholic Church in Iowa City and then into a former restaurant in Muscatine. Average attendance was about 20 people. The Divine Liturgy that Father Riebe celebrates in Des Moines averages around 60 people, he said. Some are Byzantine Catholics and others are Roman Catholics interested in Byzantine liturgy. The priest said he sees new faces each week.
He doesn’t think the Muscatine area had the population base to sustain the outreach. “Folks who yearn for the Latin Mass (Tridentine Mass) are attracted to the Byzantine liturgy,” Father Riebe said. The bishops of both dioceses — Bishop Walsh in Davenport and Bishop William Joensen in Des Moines have been helpful and cooperative, he added.
Adam and Lynsey Kemner, parents of 10 children, were instrumental in founding Byzantine Catholic Outreach of Iowa and the family devoted its efforts to the outreach. “This has been difficult for my family as we have sought to apply Vatican II’s and multiple popes’ desire for Eastern Christians to live out a fuller expression of their Church’s spirituality and liturgical life,” Kemner said.
“This includes authentic worship space and parochial celebrations of Vespers, Matins and other services beyond just the Divine Liturgy. We are going from that every Sunday and feast day to just once a month. One of the more difficult aspects is the loss of the community that accompanies the agape/fellowship that followed our Sunday services as that is being suspended for the time being as well. To be a truly Christian community, there needs to be the vertical aspect of liturgy that sanctifies God’s people and the horizontal aspect of hospitality. There is a lessening of both that hopefully will be quickly rectified.”
In his family, “We can keep on a certain modicum of prayer life in our home, but it is not the same as when many voices are joined together in praise of our God, Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and his Mother in a space where the many members of the body of Christ can come together.”
