Dolores Snyder receives 2005 Excellence in Catechesis Award
By Sean Gallagher
Dolores Snyder, director of religious education and pastoral associate of St. Paul Parish in Sellersburg, is the 2005 recipient of the Excellence in Catechesis Award.
The award was presented to Snyder on May 3 at the spring business meeting for parish administrators of religious education sponsored by the Office of Catholic Education and held at St. Agnes Parish in Nashville.
This year was the 10th anniversary of the award, which is presented annually to one administrator to recognize and support the significant role of the professional catechetical administrator in the Archdiocese of Indianapolis.
Snyder has served as the director of religious education at St. Paul Parish for almost 17 years. Before that, she was a religion teacher at the parish’s school. Overall, she has ministered at the parish for nearly 30 years. She is also a member of Southern Indiana Directors of Religious Education.
Snyder said that when she learned that she was the recipient of this year’s award she was “flabbergasted.”
“So many of us are on the same level of trying to do ministry in so many areas and I’ve seen people out there who have the same years of experience, if not more, who’ve done such beautiful jobs that it could be any of us,” she said. “We’re all outstanding in ministry because we work so doggone hard to run our programs and meet our people on our level.”
Father Paul Richart, pastor of St. Paul Parish, who nominated Snyder for the award, spoke in appreciation of her desire to serve the specific needs of the parishioners.
“She’s interested in finding out what the needs are of people and she tries to construct and organize programs to fit those needs,” he said. “That’s always appreciated by me and by the parish.”
Snyder spoke about her own experience of growing in the faith when she explained her own love for it now and her desire to pass it on to others.
Raised by a Jewish father and a Catholic mother, Snyder was not baptized until she was 17. She credits the faith of her mother, her mother’s family, and the women religious who taught her in a Catholic school she started attending when she was in the sixth grade for laying the foundation for her present catechetical leadership.
“The nuns were so kind to us and so nurturing and went so out of their way to make us feel loved and cared about,” she said. “It was the nurturing of that seed that my parents had planted that just grew into a faith to this day that I hold most dear. It’s one of the most precious things in my whole life. It’s carried me through good times and bad, sorrows, losses and all. It’s made me want to evangelize.”
Snyder acknowledged that she has looked to Ann Northam, director of religious education for St. Augustine Parish in nearby Jeffersonville, as a model for her ministry as an administrator of religious education. Northam was the 2000 recipient of the Excellence in Catechesis Award.
Northam was “excited” and said “it was a wonderful thing” when she learned that Snyder was the recipient of this year’s award.
“She really has a beautiful spirit present in her,” Northam said. “She almost always has a smile on her face and she is always willing to help and get involved and be a part of the leadership of different tasks we have [in the New Albany Deanery]. She just has a radiant faith.” †