Prilife Profile

Father Bryce Sibley began preparing for the front lines of the New Evangelization even before he was ordained for the Diocese of Lafayette, La., in 2000: While a seminarian in Rome, he earned a doctorate at the John Paul II Institute of Marriage and Family.

Today, as a 31-year-old pastor at St. Joseph Church and its African-American Mission of St. Louis — both in Parks, La. — Father Sibley brings the Holy Father's thinking to thousands. It's not hard, he says, when you let the teachings do the talking.

“The Theology of the Body speaks to people's hearts,” he says. “People respond to it. That's the thing I have been most moved by. The Holy Father has given us the seed, and now we need to develop it and apply it and make it grow.”

He does that in a weekly catechesis at his parish, with engaged couples, in talks at other churches and on CDs. And he runs a popular blog, or Internet journal: “A Saintly Salmagundi” at britius.stblogs.org.

“My own passions are beautification of the Church, marriage and family,” he explains.

Carolyn Wiltz at the St. Louis mission approves. “Father Sibley talks about the family and the strength of the family, and the more he talks about it, the more we become families in the Church,” she says. “Not just mom and the kids, but now moms, dads and the kids.”

At St. Joseph's, an appreciative Ben Boudreaux, father of five, remembers Father Sibley saying that if “the men lead as they're supposed to lead, the women will follow. If the man's there at church, the woman's there. Not the other way around.”

“Father Sibley has taken it upon himself to be an example to men in general, as men being men,” Boudreaux adds. “He seems to be very sure of his masculinity and very proud of it.”

Boudreaux appreciates hearing Father Sibley's passion for truth in homilies. “Topics most are uncomfortable to talk about, Father Sibley has no problem talking about,” he says.

This quality has always been evident to mentor and friend Father Randall Moreau, pastor of Mary Queen of All Saints Church in Ville Platte, La.

“He's fearless in preaching the truth, boldly and zealously,” says Father Moreau. He recalls the time some people complained about his own choice of sermon topics. They went to the town's other parish only to hear Father Sibley give the same messages.

Says Father Moreau, “People made the statement, ‘We have nowhere to run now.’ That made a difference in the town. That consistency makes a great deal of difference when they see that in a young priest. It's encouraging for them.”

Faith Defender

Calling himself a teacher at heart, Father Sibley believes “a Catholic cannot afford not to be educated about the truth in our contemporary society. There are so many challenges … you have to know how to defend your faith.”

To that end, he's taught philosophy at Sacred Heart High School. “I'm a firm believer in the need for philosophy,” he explains. “A lot of the young people have problems with God and faith, but the real underlying problem is with philosophy. They haven't been taught how to reason and think.”

No wonder his favorite Holy Father encyclical is Fides et Ratio (On the Relationship Between Faith and Reason).

Wiltz finds Father Sibley's interest in young people makes a major difference. “With his energy and the programs he put in place for them — not just the little ones, but the high-school ones as well — they're almost competing to be lectors, ushers and altar boys,” she says. “They're growing religiously and participating more in our church and community. And their desire to go to school and college has improved.”

Father Sibley is currently busy restoring St. Joseph Church. Some 16 large murals are going up. Executed by local artists and influenced by St. John Lateran in Rome, they'll display Old Testament scenes on one side and New Testament corollaries on the other.

One scene from Leviticus depicts the scapegoat walking out of a city. Opposite it, Christ carries his cross outside the gates. Another pairs the first Passover with the Last Supper. Such art “makes people inquisitive about (biblical events) and it beautifies the church,” Father Sibley says.

He's also adding new large paintings of saints, including Lucy, John Vianney, Stephen and Anthony. Outside, he's introducing parishioners to the newest saints with statues of Sts. Pio of Pietrelcina and Gianna Molla.

Father Sibley has started a Gregorian chant choir and has a Sunday Mass using the Novus Ordo with major parts in Latin. “We're trying to make the liturgy more traditional,” he says. “Most people really like it.”

Meanwhile, this respecter of tradition is also a technophile who is excited about the opportunities modern communications technologies present to spread the Gospel. In this vein, he's started the Cinema and Culture series at the Newman Center at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette to screen films and discuss what they say about our culture.

And then there's that web-site, which gets close to 1,000 hits a day. Webster's defines “salmagundi” as “a mixture of various ingredients; a medley; a potpourri; a miscellany.” Fittingly, the blog's tagline is “Various ruminations on Catholicism, satire, esoterica, hagiography, nuttiness, culture, etc.”

Drawing inspiration from Ronald Knox's Essays in Satire and the virtue of playfulness, Father Sibley uses the digital outpost to get a gentle laugh over, not to ridicule, the fickle fashions of popular culture — and to evangelize unbelievers and catechize the faithful. “The good thing the web has done is bringing like-minded Catholics together,” he says. Many people write with questions and even ask how to become Catholic.

If all this isn't enough, Father Sibley does pro-life work as a chaplain with the Women's Center in Lafayette, and he's leading a group of young people to the next March for Life in Washington.

By teaching kids the sanctity of life and what abortion is at a very young age, “we're going to make a lot of strides in the future,” he says. “We can really catechize them and instill a respect for life and virtue in them now.” Spoken like a young man after the Holy Father's own heart.

Joseph Pronechen writes from Trumbull, Connecticut.