What's Happening

September 29, 2025, Adrian, Michigan – Members of the Adrian Rea Literacy Center – adult learners, volunteer tutors, and staff – gathered along with Adrian Dominican Sisters, Associates, and friends to honor a woman who made a difference in their lives. They waited in a long, informal reception line on a Sunday afternoon to thank Sister Carleen Maly, OP, upon her retirement from her position as director of the literacy center.

Founded in 2008, Adrian Rea Literacy Center was one of six literacy centers sponsored by the Adrian Dominican Sisters and located in Adrian and Detroit, Michigan; Chicago; and West Palm Beach, Florida. The Adrian literacy center recently became independent of the Congregation.

Adrian Rea offers free, one-on-one training to adult learners, most of whom are learning English as a Second Language (ESL). The center also offers tutoring to adults whose first language is English. The focus is on listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills – in a welcoming, safe environment

Christine MacNaughton, Chair of the Board of the Adrian Rea Literacy Center, began a short program during the retirement celebration. She presented a plaque to Sister Carleen that read, “In grateful appreciation for dedicated service, Sister Carleen Maly, OP, the heart and soul of the Adrian Rea Literacy Center, 2008 to 2025.”

More personal messages were written on Sister Carleen’s next gift: a quilt made of squares on which Adrian Rea adult learners, volunteer tutors, staff, and board members had written of their appreciation for Sister Carleen.

For her part, Sister Carleen expressed gratitude to the people gathered and gave a heart-felt plea for more people to volunteer as tutors. “We’ve got to help people, especially now that they don’t even know what’s coming,” she said.

She was moved by the people who came to the celebration and by the work that went into preparing it. “The key moments were the beautiful way that my colleagues transformed what was our workspace and our teaching and tutoring space into a royal room – a regal room, because it was lined up with places where people could sit and get to know each other,” she said.

An educator for much of her life as an Adrian Dominican Sister, Sister Carleen also engaged in parish ministry and in 1994 was elected Chapter Prioress (Superior) of the Congregation’s Florida Chapter. In 2000, at the conclusion of her term, she moved to Detroit to be closer to her mother after the death of her father. 

She was invited to live at the convent of Dominican High School and work with Sisters Marie Damian Schoenlein, OP, and Sarah Cavanaugh, OP, at the Dominican Literacy Center. “It was my first taste of adult literacy,” Sister Carleen said. She worked there for three years until the Congregation asked her to serve as Director of Vocation Outreach.

When Sisters Marie Damian and Sarah opened Adrian Rea Literacy Center in Adrian, they asked Sister Carleen to join them. Sister Carleen succeeded Sister Marie Damian as director.

“My biggest challenge was training and keeping tutors,” Sister Carleen said. “We had no trouble finding people who wanted to be tutored.” But, she added, much of the literacy work in the Adrian area was focused on teenagers. “To offer a program of literacy for adult learning was new to a lot of people in this area.” 

Sister Carleen emphasized that the people who are tutored are referred to as adult learners – not as students. “Their children are students.” Being called learners “elevates the adults. Some of them already have a first language of their own. They’re coming here to learn another language,” English, she said.

Sister Carleen expressed admiration for the adult learners – for the hard work they do in their jobs and their determination to learn English. “A lot of the work they do is hard,” she said. “There have been summers here that have been brutal. They’ve been outside eight hours a day … in manual, back-breaking labor.” Yet, she added, they are willing to put in the extra time and effort to come to the literacy center to develop their skills in English.

“The joys are knowing that we are able to change people’s lives because we are able to give them the gift of being able to read, write, and speak in English,” Sister Carleen said. She also finds joy in “giving them the ability to achieve their goals: to help their children [with their homework], to be able to know what the doctor is saying, and to get a better job.” Their commitment to learning also serves as a good example to their children – and a bridge between parents and children who are also learning. “They don’t hesitate to say, ‘My children are teaching me,’” she said. 

Many adult learners also ask for help to prepare for the U.S. citizenship test. “We ask the tutors to help their learners study the 100 questions involved in the citizenship test,” Sister Carleen said, and many have become U.S. citizens.

Sister Carleen is pleased with the dedication of the volunteer tutors, who themselves experience joy as they help the adult learners to improve their English skills. But, she added, Adrian Rea is always in need of more tutors. One-on-one, individualized tutoring “is the best way and the most tried and true way for most adults to learn,” she explained.

Now that she is retired, Sister Carleen said she hopes to continue volunteering in places where there’s a need to help adults, perhaps helping to bring in more tutors. “I believe in our program,” she said. “I’d like to introduce people to our literacy center, that we have a good place for people to come and learn to speak English. This is one of the few literacy centers in this area. It opens new horizons.”  

For more information on how to become a tutor or a learner, contact Adrian Rea Literacy Center at 517-264-7320 in English or 517-264-7327 en Español, or email [email protected]. The Center’s hours are 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, and 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Wednesdays.
 

Caption for above feature photo: Sister Carleen Maly, OP, left, and Christine MacNaughton, Chair of the Board of Adrian Rea Literacy Center, display a quilt of squares containing messages from tutors, adult learners, and staff of the literacy center to Sister Carleen.

September 17, 2025, Adrian, Michigan – The feast of St. Phoebe – declared a saint by the early Church before the canonization process was begun – was celebrated on September 10, 2025, in St. Catherine Chapel at the Adrian Dominican Sisters’ Motherhouse. The Liturgy and an afternoon program on St. Phoebe were organized by the Spirits Rising Mission Group of the Adrian Dominican Sisters.

“I commend to you Phoebe our sister, who is [also] a minister of the church at Cenchreae, that you may receive her in the Lord in a manner worthy of the holy ones, and help her in whatever way she may need from you, for she has been a benefactor to many and to me as well.” These words, taken from the letter of St. Paul to the Romans (16:1-2), are never proclaimed from the pulpit as part of the Catholic Church’s lectionary, but they are used by many in the Church to uphold Phoebe as a deacon and minister of the early Church.

During the liturgy at St. Catherine Chapel, Associate Kathryn “Katie” Love offered a reflection on Romans 16:1-2 and the Beatitudes. She noted that St. Paul lifted Phoebe “as an example – a woman whose ministry strengthens the body of Christ” through her leadership, service, and care for God’s people.  

Phoebe’s legacy has been carried on by women throughout the course of Church history, Katie said. “Think of the women who opened their homes as house churches in Paul’s time … the women martyrs who gave their lives for Christ … the women religious who have taught, healed, and cared for the poor across centuries … and the mothers and grandmothers who have passed the faith from one generation to the next.”

She encouraged the assembly to remember Phoebe and to “give thanks for the countless women who have carried the Church on their shoulders – in the early days, in history, and right here among us now.”

Sister Cheryl Liske, OP, delegate of the Spirits Rising Mission Group, led Sisters and Associates in an afternoon program that included input on St. Phoebe and opportunities for small- and large-group discussion. The program explored the role of St. Phoebe and its implications for the role of women in the Catholic Church today.

“Phoebe is the only person directly named as a deacon and benefactor” in Scriptures, said Sister Cheryl, an iconographer who created an icon of St. Phoebe and presented it to the Adrian Dominican Sisters on the Feast of St. Phoebe in 2024. The icon is now on display in the gathering space of St. Catherine Chapel. 

“We recognize and honor her as our sister,” she added. “She used her power for the good of others and for the Gospel. Perhaps we could reflect on how we use whatever social power we have to come to the aid of the needy. If we do that, Phoebe will be proud to have us as her successors.”

Sister Cheryl noted the “ongoing discernment” over women’s ordination to the permanent diaconate, a role distinct from that of the priest. One of the primary documents of Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, describes the role of the deacon. At the disposal of the bishop, the deacon is called to “serve the whole people of God and take care of the sick and the poor.”

Sister Cheryl contrasted the recent 60 Minutes interview in which Pope Francis stated that the issue of women’s ordination was closed with Paragraph 60 of the summary of the Catholic Church’s three-year Synodal Process, which calls for “full implementation of all the opportunities already provided for in Canon Law with regard to the role of women” and requests that the “discernment of diaconal ministry for women remains open.”

Understanding the difference between the 60 Minutes interview and paragraph 60 is one step towards continuing the discernment of women deacons, Sister Cheryl said. She also encouraged participants to sign on to the request that the Feast of St. Phoebe be restored to the Roman calendar and that the reference to St. Phoebe in Romans 16:1-2 be restored to the lectionary. 

The celebration of the Feast of St. Phoebe was in response to a request by Discerning Deacons, an organization whose mission is to “engage Catholics in the active discernment of our Church about women and the diaconate and contribute to the renewal of this ministry for our times.”
 

Caption for above feature photo: Participants in the September 10, 2025, presentation on St. Phoebe engage in small-group discussion.