Article by Deacon Ed Harmon
In March of 1995, I was ordained to the diaconate by Bishop John T. Steinbock in St. Joseph's Church in Selma. I had served for 3 years assigned to the Selma parish, when Bishop Steinbock called me and asked if Theresa, my wife, and I would come and serve on the new Diaconate Committee. We agreed to serve on the committee and went to the first meeting to be held in the Chancery Office conference room. As we entered the front doors, Bishop Steinbock asked us to come into his office for a minute. In his office, he asked me to be the Director of the Diaconate Program. I said that I was not sure that I was qualified to serve in that position. Bishop John said that I should leave that to him so after a week, I agreed to assume the position.
The first problem was that the Diocese did not have a program curriculum in place. That meant that the first job I had was to develop a formation program that could be accepted by the Conference of Bishops. At that time, the Conference of Bishops was in the process of revising the basic norms for the formation and ministry programs contained in what I called the "old red book". It was my luck that my former formation director in the Diocese of Oakland, Msgr. Ted Kraus was responsible for writing the new drafts for the new basic norms. This draft was the third draft so it contained most of the proposed changes the bishops were going to make. I was able to relieve Msgr. Kraus of a draft copy so that I could begin to prepare our own formation program. It took 6 months to get our first draft up and ready for Bishop Steinbock to review. Much of the work in the process was done with the assistance of the Permanent Diaconate Committee. Members of that original committee were; Sr. Sandra Ann Silva, Chancellor Deacon Maury McCaffery, Office Of Ministries, Fr. Rod Craig Vocations Director, Msgr. Ray Dreiling Pastor of OLPH Clovis, Sr. Clara Budenz, O.P., Religious Office and Theresa Harmon, my wife. Their help was of great value to the completion of our proposed document. The corrections requested by Bishop Steinbock were made and he sent the document to the Conference of Bishops. With great surprise, they approved the document with some minor changes. Bishop Steinbock was very excited when he told me of the approval. The diaconate office was then housed in the back room of the Tribunal Office with Maria Alanis as my secretary doing double duty as the Vocations Secretary.
While preparing the formation document, we had sent out applications for those who wanted to become deacons. Applications that were accompanied by the pastor's recommendation were considered for future interview. The Diaconate Committee started doing the interviews in the screening process even before the NCCB approval . We met with the applicants in their own deaneries for dinner and after dinner did the interviews. The first group was accepted by Bishop Steinbock after several months of interviews and application reviews. The candidates were then assigned to small groups with mentors to begin to understand that the diaconate vocation was a response to being called and that they would need to complete the required formation program. I believe that trying to determine if a candidate was called was the most difficult part of my job as director. As soon as our document was approved, I began the process of scheduling classes and recruiting instructors. Most of the instructors came from the priests of the diocese who Bishop Steinbock believed, had some training in the classes they were to teach. I was most grateful for the cooperation of our priests who made my job so easy. We held classes once a month on a weekend both Saturday and Sunday. The candidates used local motels and other candidates homes for housing. Sunday dinner was always special because each ethnic group in the class, provided a meal of their own culture. This went a long way in developing a family atmosphere among the mixed cultural group of candidates.
This article would not be complete if I did not mention the support of my wife Theresa. She attended 3 and 1/2 years of formation classes twice a month, in Oakland with me and was a great help in making the candidate evaluations. She made the background image in the attached photo when I was ordained. My 13 years of service as Director of the Diaconate for the Diocese of Fresno and especially serving Bishop Steinbock were great years with memories that will last all of my life.