Faith, reason and road trips: How Bishop Monforton sees his mission to evangelize

Detroit's new auxiliary bishop wants to share Christ with everyone he meets — no matter how many miles he puts on his car

DETROIT — For the past 11 years, Bishop Jeffrey M. Monforton has led one of the smallest Catholic dioceses in the United States — by population, that is.

The Diocese of Steubenville, which covers 13 rural counties in southeastern Ohio, serves just 29,000 Catholics. When it comes to sharing the Catholic faith, however, Steubenville's reputation has always seemed a little bit larger than life.

Home to one of the most vibrant Catholic universities in the country, the Franciscan University of Steubenville, the area's embrace of what Pope St. John Paul II called the “new evangelization” has for years extended far beyond its parishes, schools and borders.

But it’s not just the university that embraces this joyful, missionary mindset.

Bishop Monforton, who on Sept. 28 was named the 32nd auxiliary bishop of his hometown Archdiocese of Detroit and will inaugurate his new ministry on Nov. 7, also has a passionate heart for evangelization — one he’s shared with as many people in Appalachian Ohio as he could reach.

Over the past decade, he’s racked up more than 350,000 miles on two cars driving all over the 5,910-square-mile diocese, through factory towns and farming villages, over foothills and coal mines, on a personal mission to encounter every parish, every school and every soul entrusted to his care.

Bishop Monforton’s commitment to personal engagement isn’t just part of his job as a bishop. He truly believes it’s what Jesus would expect of him.

“The most important part of evangelization is encounter, to exude or demonstrate the joy of the Gospel,” Bishop Monforton, 60, told Detroit Catholic in an interview shortly before his appointment was made public. “No one wants to be part of a miserable organization. As the body of Christ, we’re meant to be contagious with the Holy Spirit, and what comes from that joy is hope.”

Perhaps even more so than southeast Michigan, Ohio’s rust belt has been decimated by post-industrial poverty, Bishop Monforton said, leaving churches with scant resources to give people that hope — save for the faith in their hearts and the shoes on their feet.

“Most of (Steubenville’s) parishes are really small,” Bishop Monforton said. “Often, pastors aren’t just the pastor; sometimes they are the secretary, the housekeeper and the maintenance man, too. They have to balance all that while working with the people.”

Evangelizing with so few resources means getting creative, but it also means rethinking ministry to prioritize authentic encounters with Christ — especially when it comes to young people and families, Bishop Monforton said.

As an example, Bishop Monforton cited the diocese's annual Mass for married couples celebrating anniversaries of 20, 25, 30 years and up — a testament to the strength of long-lasting Catholic marriages. While such couples provide an enduring witness to the faith, newer marriages also have something important to offer, he said.

“We celebrate those milestones because those couples have earned it,” Bishop Monforton said. “But we also started including couples celebrating 10 years, because that way children have a chance to see the Church celebrating their parents’ marriages. At 20 years, a lot of kids are already off to college, and we need them to see that.”

As part of his commitment to being on the road, Bishop Monforton has made it a point to visit each one of the diocese's 11 schools during Catholic Schools Week in January — celebrating Mass for each one, sometimes multiple Masses in a day.

Whenever he visits a school, Bishop Monforton said he invites students to ask any question they want — even the tough ones.

“When I go to a classroom, I conduct an impromptu ‘ask the bishop’ session so the kids have a chance to ask questions,” Bishop Monforton said. “For the later grades, I’ll demonstrate for them using science the existence of God, because we live in a culture right now that says faith and science are mutually exclusive. In fact, they are mutually inclusive. Faith and reason complement each other, and I show that to the students.”

Bishop Monforton began publishing monthly “Ask the Bishop” columns in the Diocese of Steubenville’s newspaper in November 2012, answering three questions each month submitted by students. During the pandemic, he compiled the fruit of those columns into a book, “Ask the Bishop: Questions and Answers Over the Years,” which he now distributes during confirmations.

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“It’s amazing the questions that kids have,” Bishop Monforton said. “In many ways, they’re vicariously asking the questions their parents have about the Church. Over a seven-year period, we got tons of questions submitted.”

Bishop Monforton’s episcopal motto — “Faith Comes From Hearing,” which comes from Romans 10:17 — is a testament to his belief in the power of dialogue and personal conversation to change hearts.

“That has always been my focus,” he said. “When I listen to the kids, they have deep questions about their faith, and that means it matters. When I answer them, I can’t just say, ‘It’s a mystery,’ because they want to know. We have an obligation to evangelize.”

By teaching and educating children in the faith — especially those attending Catholic schools — Bishop Monforton said parents often come to a greater understanding of the faith themselves.

“One of my tools to evangelize parents is through the children,” Bishop Monforton said. “How many of our students don’t go to Mass on Sundays, but they are going to Mass at their school? That doesn't replace (the Sunday obligation), but I'd be beside myself if we had kids going to our schools and they never went to Mass.”

Even if it means long hours in the car and stretching himself a little thin, Bishop Monforton said he never misses a confirmation Mass, a priest’s funeral or an occasion that's important to a parish.

“Perhaps the biggest challenge I’ve had in my ministry is that I’ve gone to so many places, sometimes it compromises the length of time I can spend at each one. It’s a balancing act, and I’m sharpening my skills in that area,” he said. “But not going somewhere is not an option.”

Bishop Monforton said he’s perpetually amazed by the early Church’s witness to evangelization. Without iPads, email, telephones or internet, the apostles spread the news of Christ’s resurrection worldwide, so why should the Church today be held to a lesser standard?

“We began with so few people, and today there are 1.3 billion Catholics on the planet,” Bishop Monforton said. “You think of all the persecutions the apostles had to endure. Right from the beginning, there was division, and yet the Holy Spirit endures in guiding us. If the Church were only a cult, and not established by God, it would not have survived the first century.”

Instead of technology, what the early Church had was something much greater, Bishop Monforton said — a belief that Jesus changed everything, and the fortitude to share that conviction with the world.

“God always gives us what we need, even if there are times when we don’t think we’re getting the spiritual 'text messages' we’d like to receive,” Bishop Monforton said. “Jesus Christ made the Church necessary for the salvation of humanity. We are the body of Christ, and we have to be credible missionary disciples. We’ve been that way right from the beginning.”