St Anthony’s Catholic Church

I am writing this review because I am heart broken. It is a great loss.
I have gone to St. Anthony’s all my life. I was raised by a single mom who could not afford to send us to school there, but we were raised in the Catholic Church. All three of my mom’s kids were baptized, Holy Communion, and Confirmed at St. Anthony’s. We moved out of the city, and we still always continued to make the trip to our Parish on Sundays for mass.
We now all have children, and like our mother, want to give our children back to the Lord as we were raised.
We were turned away and shunned by our St. Anthony’s Parish this week.
On April 26, 2015 we registered our children to get baptized in June. Yesterday, May 12, 2015, two weeks after they took our money, they decided to call everyone of us and inform us Father Austin will not baptize our babies because we are not married through a Catholic Church.
In fact Father Austin didn’t even take the time to talk to all of us. He had Caroline call us and tell us that we are not practicing Catholics so the Father will not do it.
They would prefer that the mothers are single and the children are fatherless and then they will baptize the babies.
However, being that all of our children are growing up in a happy, loving, two-​parent home, but we were not married through the Catholic Church, they will not allow our children to get baptized.
I am astonished my Parish where I have grown up is rejecting my child.
I asked that Caroline speak to Father Austin and explain how we have all done our sacraments through St. Anthony’s and have been a part of the Parish our entire lives and see that perhaps our situation is a special one and make an allowance for the sake of our babies.
Father Austin didn’t care and still turned our children away.
We have also baptized two of our godchildren there in our same situations so I am not sure why now they are actually saying «No.»
I will not be attending mass at St. Anthony’s Church any longer.
They didn’t know how to refund our money we paid when we registered. Then Caroline and Mabel finally figured it out, and we went to get the money when we were treated so rudely and like a bad business transaction.
This Church is all about money.
Please find another Parish to attend. This one will not do a thing for you in your time of need unless you offer up some major bucks.

There’s a few places where I can really can open up and here at St. Anthony’s that’s exactly what I can do. I done my first communion also my confirmation here and now I’m a Peer Minister for the Confirmation Program and the people that come help out with this program are just amazing and willing to help anyone who asks for help. Great atmosphere friendly caring are only a few that I can express right now but this place is much much more

We recently celebrated our Mom’s life with the Rosary and funeral Mass at St. Anthony’s and both services were beautiful. The pastor (Fr. Austin) led the Mass and many commented afterwards what a wonderful job he did. The service was both in English and Spanish but he made it flow in such a way that it did not matter if someone did not speak the other language.
The pastor also visited our Mom during her hospital stays and at our parents home several times to give her blessings for her health.
Mom received visits from those who ministries were to visit the sick as well.
I’m told from family members that still attend this church that this pastor has made strides in revitalizing the parish which serves a very diverse working class community.
I went to school year and graduated in the mid 60’s. In some ways it was good to see that the church looks much the same as it did when I sent to school year. It is a beautiful church.
But, one can see that other plant facilities could use modernization like the parish hall, coffee shop etc. (So if anyone that is reading this would like to contribute, I’d encourage you to consider giving to this church).
I hope that the pastor is able to achieve the goals that he has for St. Anthony’s and that the parish community continues to grow and support those efforts.
If we lived close enough, we’d attend this church partly because of my old connections but more because of the warm and generous spirit of the pastor.