Rest in peace

By Patricia Kasten
Compass Associate Editor

	Related article this week: • Deacon Wessing dies; former editor of diocesan newspaper     Also started diocesan     communications, pro-life offices

"We each receive from God the grace to live our lives well with the human abilities and talents we have. Not using them is our loss, and a loss to all who knew and loved us..."

These words were penned by a Catholic journalist I knew, who died on Feb. 24: Deacon Reinhart Wessing of St. Thomas More Parish in Appleton.

Deacon Wessing - Deacon Reiny to his friends and members of St. Thomas More - was a former editor of our diocesan newspaper. He served as editor of The Spirit from 1971-73 and was general manager of the paper until 1978. He was also the founding director of the diocesan communications office.

A journalism graduate of Marquette University, he served at several newspapers, including the Appleton Post-Crescent, where he was a city editor.

For me, he was a type of mentor. Even though he was retired from newspaper work, he kept up on the world around him, as any good journalist does. He subscribed to many newspapers and magazines, including America, The Compass and U.S. Catholic. And we would "talk newspaper" sometimes after Mass at the parish where he served for the better part of his 35 years as a deacon.

"So, how's it going at the paper?" He would always ask me. "How's the bishop treating you?" (Since July, he had enjoyed speculating about what type of bishop we will soon be getting.)

Deacon Reiny and his wife, Rita, were dedicated to the church and their parish. He was one of the few deacons in our diocese to have served as a parish director, at St. Ann in St. Anna from 1988-92. He had also served as director of the diocesan diaconate office and founded the diocesan pro-life office.

Even after ill health began to curtail him during the last couple years, he still served at Mass and took Communion to the hospital and did countless other small things that help a parish run. He even expressed the hope, in his last weeks, that his dying would offer an example of faith to others.

He was a family man, with five children and seven grandchildren. Two of his daughters - Therese and Bridget - had been adopted from China. Bridget had some developmental disabilities due to malnutrition in China. It put some limitations in her life, but Deacon Reiny was so proud of her for being able to graduate from Xavier High School.

On June 18, 2007, Bridget died suddenly of a ruptured appendix. In a local ecumenical paper - Together in Faith - Deacon Reiny wrote about her death. "When death takes someone you love away from you, you look for ways to cope. One of the ways is to look for memories of the good times, the funny times, the times of joy."

Deacon Reiny understood the power of words and the emotions and spirituality they could call forth. He loved to use the power of words in his writing and his homilies. You could be certain that both would be sprinkled with social justice issues, as well as humor - often from his favorite comic strip: Calvin and Hobbes. Or from Peanuts. "Poor old Charlie Brown," he would say. "He never seems to catch a break."

We caught a break in having Deacon Reiny share his talents in our local church and as an editor of our Catholic newspaper.