CATHOLIC VOICES

After 26 years as a news producer at WNYT, Kathy Barrans was named diocesan director of communications last April. Barrans, who has been a long-time parishioner at St. Margaret of Cortona in Rotterdam Junction, talks with staff writer Mike Matvey about her conversion experience as a teen, her love of horses and how her faith has gotten stronger in the last year in this latest installment of The Evangelist interview series.   

TE: Where did you grow up?
KB: I was born in California at St. Francis Hospital in Lynwood, Calif., and my family lived in Garden Grove. We moved to New York State when my dad’s job got transferred when I was 6. We moved from Orange County, California to Orange County, New York. We moved to Monroe, N.Y., in May of 1971 and then I grew up there and went to college at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania. The rest of my siblings went back to California for college.

TE: Did you come from a Catholic family?
KB: Yes, it was a Catholic family. We went to church every Sunday, through religious ed, received all the sacraments but it wasn’t like it was over the top. I remember going to church every Sunday that was important; holy days my mom took us, my dad didn’t always go. When I received my confirmation, I kind of thought, “I’m off the hook,” and then my mother had another plan. She signed me up for a youth group and I was not happy about it but I had to go because she is my mom. Then she forced me to go on a retreat; the kids in my youth group weren’t even going. She had me go to Rockland County with a bunch of kids from New York City, kids I didn’t even know. I was extremely shy, I was extremely upset and I remember on the way out, it was raining, it was Friday evening and she was driving me out there and she said, “Have fun.” And I said, “Yeah, I don’t know how I am supposed to do that.” I was really fresh with her. She looked at me and hugged me and I didn’t hug her back. And I (still feel) horrible because that weekend was pivotal for me. 

I had a massive conversion experience because of a specific moment on the retreat. First of all, because I was so shy, my group leader made me the leader of the group. I hated that and we had to get up and give this talk at Sunday Mass when all our parents were back with us. Then there was this thing on Saturday night during the retreat where they made us close our eyes and they gave this talk. They said, “Imagine how excited your parents were when they found out they were going to have you. Imagine how excited they were when you were born and they found out they were pregnant with you. Now imagine, even further back, how excited God was when he thought of creating you.” I said, “What!?” I never considered God giving a hoot about me and that, for some reason, struck me and I just became a puddle and the group leader sent me off to a room with a box of tissues and I just let it out. But it changed my way of thinking and that was the first moment that God became real to me and not just a history lesson. That is where everything started from then until now.

TE: When you went to ­college, did you have an idea of what you wanted to study?
KB: In high school, we had a guidance counselor (and) they did an assessment and they determined that my strengths were writing and communicating even though I was super shy. So I went to college for communications and delved into everything. I wrote on the school paper, there was a school radio station, I got an internship at a TV station mainly because I didn’t have a car and it was close. I tried a little bit of PR, but I didn’t really like that. When I did the internship my senior year at the TV station, I decided that I liked the people, I liked the process. I persistently showed up at the news director’s office and said, “Do you have a job? Do you have a job?” And he said, “Kathy, stop. When there is something we will come to you.” I was waitressing in an Italian restaurant and he showed up and said, “We are creating a position, the overnight assignment editor. Do you want it?” And that was my break into broadcasting. 

TE: How did you end up in upstate New York?
KB: I (started at WYOU in Scranton) and we called some radio stations just to see what was going on and one of them offered me a job, on-air radio. I went to a radio newsroom and radio became my thing. Then an old friend from a radio station who got into TV, became the news director at YOU and asked me if I would come and report part time on air on TV. I was hesitant because I was so self conscious of my appearance. I liked radio, it’s anonymous. But I said yes, and I gave it a shot. Then another old news director was working at a radio station in Harrisburg and called me and offered me a job and I went down there. Then another old news director called (and said he was) starting a TV station in York, Pa., and offered me a job there and I said, “I don’t want to report, I want to produce.” So he trained me to produce and that is how I got into that. I started dating a guy and we dated for about five years and he got transferred to the Albany area. That’s why I came up this way.

TE: Was your faith always part of your life?
KB: Yes and no. It is funny because I think my faith was huge to me but I would have peaks and valleys in my faith journey and I was like two separate people. I had my faith-filled friends and my faith-filled moments and then I had my work friends/party, wild-oats friends. You live two different personalities really. It takes a lot of confidence to express your faith and be open about your faith in the world today because people judge you. I was always fearful of the judgment and I avoided it a lot. It was a very personal thing to me, very important but I wasn’t always as open about it. To tell you the truth, me in this role right now, is the most open (I have been). I think people that know me, know that my faith has meant something to me. I have always tried to grow in my faith but I have never really just been one person. It has taken me a while. It feels really good right now, I have never felt like I was in the right place more than I do now.

TE: What was your time like at WNYT? You were there for 26 years!
KB: The work is tough, you don’t get holidays, you don’t get weekends; your shift, you bounce around all the time. There are bursts of “Oh, my gosh, this is breaking now, we have to do it.” My parents came to visit me at work a few times and there was one time there was a breaking story just as I was going in to produce a newscast, and everything that you just worked the whole day planning is out the window. You get in the control room and just wait. If the live shot is ready, you take it. If the reporter has new information coming in, you write a story on the fly; you have to communicate to your director, to your production crew, your anchors, to your reporters. It’s just mayhem but it is a rush that you really enjoy. It was exciting. And there were days when it didn’t work and it was not exciting. 

TE: Were you having thoughts about leaving before this job became available?
KB: I always thought I was going to grow old and retire at Channel 13. It was the whole faith thing, it just kept coming back and poking me. Years ago, I took a resume and sent it to Bishop Scharfenberger. I had never met him and he didn’t know who I was. I emailed it to the general email and I said, “If you ever need anybody.” Never heard back. When Mary (DeTurris Poust, former communications director) announced she was leaving, I jumped up from my desk, ran out to my car and called her and said, “What do you do? I think I want your job.” She and I talked and I applied for the job and the process started about a year ago. My first interview was on dad’s birthday, Jan. 21, last year. They offered me the job on the anniversary of the day my mom died, March 15. I started here April 18.

TE: You are a parishioner at St. Margaret of Cortona in Rotterdam Junction?
KB: I had been living in Clifton Park and was a longtime parishioner at St. Ambrose in Latham working with their Life Team program. I have always wanted to be around horses and learn how to handle horses, so in my 40s, I found a rescue out in Pattersonville and I showed up there and the owner was just starting her not-for-profit and started to teach me. She was willing to go there and I said, “I am a hard worker and willing to learn.” So she taught me and she had a rescue and rescued three horses. She expected to keep two of them, the last one in the rescue was going to be left in the barn, so the rescue group said, “Could you take him too?” So they took him and two friends and myself ended up adopting him. That was my first step in the horse world. She had bought the property next door to her and moved to the house on that property and decided to rent out her house, so I became a tenant and lived on the farm which to me was a dream.

St. Margaret’s was right down the road so I showed up there and started going. The first time I walked in the door, the priest came up to me and said, “Hi, you are a new face, who are you?” And I am thinking, “He noticed me, that meant something to me.” The owner of the rescue, she and I parted ways and I moved off the property and went back to Watervliet and stayed with some friends until I could find my own house and I went right back to that area because I love it. When I went back to St. Margaret’s, an usher at the time who has since passed away, he was at the back door and I walked in and he stopped me and said, “Hey, redhead?” And I said, “Yeah.” And he said, “Welcome home.” And that is exactly how it felt, that church just feels like home. The people there, I call them meat-and-potatoes people; they are down home. The important stuff, just the genuine stuff matters. 

We have coffee hour every Sunday after Mass and it is such a production and everybody looks forward to it and the coffee hours there remind me of when I was growing up. My mom would put all the food out on the table and we would just eat lunch together as a family. It was kind of haphazard, but we were all there talking. My dad was reading the newspaper; my mom was reading the funnies and laughing. It was nice and that is how I feel about coffee hour. 

TE: Your love for horses is your passion. Can you talk about that?
KB: I have always wanted to be around horses since I was a little girl and I am the oldest of five and we are all a year apart. My brothers and sisters wanted nothing to do with barns, nothing to do with large animals. My mom tried a couple of lessons for me and then said, “I just can’t. It’s too expensive and your siblings don’t want anything to do with it.” So I never really got to feed that need growing up, again I was shy and I didn’t really take the initiative myself. Then in my 40s, for some reason, I said, “I am going to do this.” 

TE: Do you own horses yourself?
KB: I do now. I had the one that we rescued in the rescue, so I adopted him. But I really don’t put any money into my house or me, it is all about the horses but that makes me happy. My friend who passed away, she got her own horse and when she died suddenly her family asked if I would take her horse too. So I have him. I couldn’t afford two on my own and then a couple came along and fell in love with him and I said, “If you will stay in his life, I will bring him home.” So they are still in his life and they help me with his expenses so I can have two. Then I have a third at my house because a friend of mine boards her horse at my house because she likes the setup.

TE: Going back to your job as director of communications, you took the job in a difficult period for the Diocese. Were you aware of that going in?
KB: Yes, it was the reason I took the job and my friends think I am nuts but my faith means something to me and a lot of bad stuff has happened in the Church and I can sit back and say “Gee, I wish things would be better.” Or I, as an active Catholic, who cares about our Church can try to be part of that process. I want to be part of the healing and I never felt more inspired to be part of something more than in my entire life. It is hard to explain. I have never experienced this before. I have no false hope that this is going to be easy. It’s not. There have been difficulties but it is a worthy cause, it is a worthy effort. I am OK with taking some punches because I think, quite frankly, the people that are hurt, they deserve to give some punches and I want to help them. I know a lot of people on the hurt end of things don’t necessarily believe that we care about them. I do. The only way to show that is to do something about it and be me and be genuine and keep moving forward even if you don’t want to believe. Being here, there are a lot of good people in this building, there are a lot of good people in this Diocese, there is a lot of good going on and I think when I started here and I am walking down the halls, people would often say to me, “I will see you when the bad stuff happens.” Well, there is good stuff happening too and we want to talk about that. There is hope and I have hope. I think that if you believe in the God that we profess to serve, he is a God of hope.

TE: Is there some experience in your first year at the Diocese that gives you more hope than others?
KB: There are several actually, but when (abuse survivor) Steve Mittler reached out. I was extremely happy when I saw him reach out to us because at the time I was saying I wanted to get on this Hope and Healing Committee here. I asked if I could join and they readily said yes. I said we need to hear from the survivors and I wasn’t sure how to go there, how to get those dialogues going and then he reached out. And I was like, “Oh, my gosh, this is awesome” and we reached back and we had the Mass and I was nervous. I wasn’t sure what to expect. Again are you going to take some hits? I am OK with that. It went well and I bumped into him in the parking lot afterwards and he said this was good and I felt it was good and it felt healing to me. … My neighbors know a survivor and they got me in touch with him. I reached out and said, “Would he talk to me?” And he said yes and we had a conversation with Frederick (Jones), our Assistance Coordinator, and my first question to him was: “Can the Catholic Church be part of the healing, and if so, how?” He immediately said, “Yes” and went on to list a number of points and then I wrote up my notes from our conversation and sent it to him and said, “Is this a fair portrayal?” He said, “Yes it is, thank you. Here are a few more points I would like you to add.” So I added those and I posted them on our website. 

We also got in touch with a group from Milwaukee, Wisc., called Awake and they do a lot of forums with survivors. Myself, Ann Marie Carswell from the Safe Environment Office, and Father Matt Duclos all joined a conversation one night with five survivors and they each shared their stories. One was the head of SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) nationally. They all shared their stories and we got to listen to what they want Catholics to know. Many of them are active Catholics still so it has just been a learning experience. Then we started the Hope and Healing Masses because we want to know how we can help. What are the needs? We won’t know that until we hear from people. Our concern is there are a lot of people suffering in silence who have not yet come forward. They haven’t filed anything under the CVA, so they are still silent sufferers. We want them to know that we are willing to help them too, if we can. But we want to know what the needs are. We are trying to find counseling resources, we are bringing counselors to each of these Masses. But it is important that we be a Church of service and people know that we are willing to serve.

TE: Can you talk about the levels of healing that are needed?
KB: I think there is healing needed in a lot of ways. There are people who are coming to church still who might be angry that there is all this dissension — What happened? Why did this happen?  They need healing. There are people who have been lifelong Catholics (and) I’ve heard some well-intentioned, really good-hearted people say, ‘Why don’t they just get over it?’ That is a lack of understanding that this is not something that anyone gets over when you suffer this kind of abuse, that is lifelong scars, it changes who you are. That is not something that you just dismiss. I think there is healing needed in the form of education and understanding and compassion and empathy, it is just on so many levels. … I think that healing is possible. I think there is hope. I came in new and I feel like I don’t fully understand what everyone is going through but in a way, maybe that is good because I can see more hope in this scenario.

TE: Has your faith wavered or gotten stronger since you have taken the job?
KB: Stronger, without a doubt. I have no doubts in the ability of God to be God. I think my doubts are in my ability to let go and let him be God because I often try to take control. And when things do happen, something else will drop and I have to stop myself and say, “God, give me peace.” There’s so many times we are trying to figure out what we are going to do here. What is our message? A lot is going on and the people that we serve should be hearing from us first and foremost. 

TE: Is there a biblical passage that you fall back on in difficult times?
KB: I used to love Jeremiah 29:11, which is “I have plans for your welfare not your woes says the Lord. Plans to give you a future full of hope …” and the next line is, “When you seek me or when you come to me.” So it has to be active. The one I love most right now is 1 John 3:18, which says, “Love, not in word or in speech, but in deed and in truth.” I just think you have to live it. I have friends in the faith who will say, “Oh, you need to believe because of all of this.” I prefer to just be a good person and hopefully somebody sees Christ in me.