EN 
ES 
Good-bye, thank-you – and a plea(se) for tolerance
Editor’s Note: This is Paul Moore’s last column for The Catholic Post. We are so grateful that he chose to share his gifts with the Catholic Church and with you. As much as he is a beautiful and faith-filled writer, he is even a better co-worker and friend. He serves as a wonderful example of living our Catholic faith.
As Paul enjoys his retirement, we will be working hard to create new and better ways to reach our Catholic faithful. We are grateful for your following and for your prayers.
——
“Somebody just called me about fish fries (in reference to a recent article, “If it’s Friday, this must be fish,” March 7, 2025).
That’s the kind of call you get at the Catholic Post Online (formerly The Catholic Post newspaper).
I am full of personal thanks for . . . being entrusted with your good news stories, but also the personal challenges that you willingly allowed me to share.
It’s been good being part of the communication of all things Catholic for the Diocese of Peoria, first as a columnist and then as a staff writer.
Now, it’s time for me to go (to retirement) but I leave with thanksgiving for incredible blessings – and a request.
JERRY KLEIN, GODFATHER OF THIS COLUMN
Within weeks of my arriving in Illinois as an immigrant from Canada in Oct., 2018, Catholic Post editor Tom Dermody had agreed to publish the first installment of my column, “In My Father’s House.”
The column’s title was somewhat of a double entendre, as my wife and I (the former Mary Louise Klein), were living in her parents’ home in Germantown Hills.
I have no illusions as to why I was given the opportunity to write the column. Jerry Klein, my late father-in-law, was a much-beloved man and writer in Central Illinois for more than 50 years, and his own final column in The Catholic Post had appeared only months before his death at age 91 in 2017.
Jerry Klein, former writer for The Catholic Post Commentary page
Whenever I would sit down to write a column at Jerry’s former desk, I could feel his spiritual and wordsmithing mentorship (along with that of my own father, Tom, who, though not a writer by trade, loved words with a similar relish).
MORE THANK-YOUS
I would also like to thank my managers during my time at the Catholic Post Newspaper/Online: Tom, Jennifer, Matt and Anne.
To all the curia (diocesan) staff who have been my workmates, including communications colleague and IT maven Amanda, my humble appreciation for the work that you do, and the faith that you model.
And to those who have born the sometimes-heavy mantle of leadership in my time here, Bishop Lou Tylka and Bishop Emeritus Daniel Jenky, my total respect and grateful thanks for your fidelity to the Church of Jesus Christ.
To the readers who offered kind words when they liked something, and forgiveness when I made mistakes, the spirit of Catholic dialogue is built in cooperation with you – as much by readers as writers.
AND YET MORE
A special thank you to Courtney Grussing, the writing freelancer who supplemented my efforts so generously and ably in 2024. Also, to our other freelancers and contributors across this fare-flung galaxy of a diocese, thank you.
Lastly, all gratitude to my partner-in-crime in the Catholic Post offices, Sonia Nelson, who has provided me with so much support, and cheerfully shared her encyclopedic knowledge of the diocese and love of its inhabitants.
Always and evermore, I can never repay the debt of faith, hope and love I owe to the two lights of my life – my wife Mary Louise, and daughter Sarah, up in Halifax, Canada.
On that note, I must add a mention of how grateful I am as a Canadian to have been accepted here since my arrival. From my childhood, watching your movies and TV shows, reading biographies of Kennedy and Lincoln, I have always admired the United States as a great nation of promise and of welcome.
THANKS, AND PRAYERS, PLEASE
I am full of personal thanks for having had the privilege of living and working in the vineyard of the Lord in the Diocese of Peoria.
I so appreciate being entrusted with your good news stories, but also the personal challenges that you willingly allowed me to share.
One of those recent stories was told to me by a woman who had lived in the U.S. for twenty-five years, and raised seven children here, but now she and her husband fear deportation.
They have stayed here on legal work permits, but in the current uncertainty she was seeking her green card, waiting, and worried.
One of her sons, a U.S. citizen, has always dreamed of becoming a police officer. He is in college studying toward that goal, but now isn’t sure if he feels called to serve and protect the citizens of a country that may not protect his mother.
ALL ARE STRANGERS IN EGYPT
So, I ask for prayers for my fellow immigrants in an atmosphere that often seems tinged with fear and suspicion of the outsider.
As Pope Francis wrote the US Catholic bishops on Feb. 14:
“The rightly formed conscience cannot fail to make a critical judgement and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality.”
And then there’s Leviticus 19:34:
“But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 19:34)
Finally, as my father-in-law Jerry Klein wrote in The Catholic Post (May 11, 2014), “Consider the power of a single Hail Mary.”
Perhaps we can send forth a whole sky full of Hail Mary passes to break His light through the clouds of the immigration impasse.
God Bless, and thanks for your consideration of my request,
Paul
