Cleveland Commonweal Local Community
Last
night was the first meeting of the Cleveland Commonweal Local Community; about
fifteen signed up, ten showed up. We all want the same thing good conversation.
Good defined as being good listeners and accepting. Conversation defined as
intellectually stimulating. Looks like we have a reasonable chance of that
happening although the logistics are challenging since we are spread widely geographically. All except one are print
subscribers, the lone digit subscriber is unhappy with the digit aspects and
will like change to print.
A National Survey of Parish Masses
About a dozen posts on parish Masses in various parts of the country by various authors including our own Tom Blackburn. My thoughts on what makes or breaks a parish follows the break. What are yours?
Architecture? often divides rather than unites people. I like modern, Gothic, and Romanesque.
Acoustics are more important than style. Acoustics are a function not only of
architecture and choir but most importantly the number of people singing. If the church is filled with
bodies that are absorbing sound but not producing sound, only a choral
performance is possible.
Music? also often divides rather than unites people. I like to listen to chant,
polyphony and most modern music. What is
important in church is whether I get to sing.
When I sing in the choir my voice is muted by the requirements of
accuracy and blending in with choir. When I sing in the congregation, my “beautiful”
voice emerges, especially if that acoustics are good, and I have a strong choir
in the background. Then people around me
often remark how “beautiful” my voices is, to which I respond, “Yes strong but
not that accurate.” So we have to choose music that people know and can
sing. A choir director once encouraged the people to sing noting they we did not have to be accurate “everybody sings
Happy Birthday!” I responded “if you chose songs like Happy Birthday that everyone knows,
everybody will sing!“
Pastors?
Again pastors often divide rather than unite people. The basic problem with the
parish is that it is a personal business rather than a community. This was clear in the old canon law when
priests were ordained to a benefice (form of support) rather than a community. The canon
has changed but the reality has not. No matter how good a parish is (programs,
choir, etc.), a new priest can destroy it all. We could have a stable parish
structure if there were many married priests, deacons and other ministers
(cantors, educators, etc.) in the parish who could not be removed by a new
pastor.
Homilies?
Rabbi Heschel said that good homilies arise out of prayer and invite us to
prayer. The homily is about the whole liturgy (the Mass, the day, the
season) not just the readings much less about entertaining stories, or lectures
that interrupt the liturgy. As the
ancient adage says, the law of prayer determines the law of belief. My
local Orthodox pastor regularly produces great short homilies by focusing upon
a few aspects of the day’s liturgy, and bringing together Christian life and the
liturgy.
Welcoming? It is
necessary but not sufficient for community. The research underlying the book
American Grace established that all the many benefits (health, happiness, helpfulness
to others) of regular church attendance happen only to those who have religious networks composed of family,
friends, or small groups. As the author Putnum said, going to church alone is like bowling
alone, i.e. it doesn’t produce community.
Thanks for this post, Jack. I was hoping someone would do one on the Commonweal survey of parishes. I was especially glad to see Tom Blackburn's and Jim Pauwels' contributions. I like your thoughts on what makes or breaks a parish. I also like the Rabbi Heschel quote that good homilies arise out of prayer and invite us to prayer. The Commonweal article is an impressive summary of some parishes which are making things work in different ways.
ReplyDeleteWhat breaks a parish is complete and utter apathy. Our doors will close when Father dies. It will make no difference to anyone in the larger community that I can see. The parish is elderly, fussy, and full of critics and backbiters.
ReplyDeleteFor those who like to read reports about other churches, Ship of Fools, "the magazine of Christian unrest," where a lot of Episcopalians hang out, has a mystery worshiper feature that can be pretty funny:
http://ship-of-fools.com/mystery/index.html
How depressing. Would there be a convent or monastery within easy driving distance? At one point my parents attended a convent Mass on Sunday, even though it was at 6:30 a.m. Mom couldn't deal with the pastor's sermons (you couldn't properly call them homilies) which were 45 minutes long and quoting at length from Maria of Agreda or Ann Catherine Emerich. Fortunately that state of affairs didn't last very long.
DeleteYeah, it is. I feel bad for Raber. He has tried thrown himself in there heart and soul for more than 12 years, as prez of the men's club, lector, and acting treasurer for the guy who goes to Florida for six months a year.
DeleteHe maintains a sense of Catholic community by corresponding with his Catholic Worker and Pax Christi friends and reading Commonweal.
The Methodist ladies let me knit stuff for the homeless shelter for them.
I am hoping that when Father is gone, we might find a place we can both feel we belong.
Maybe you might want to try the Notre Dame Catholic TV Mass which is on some cable systems as well as the internet under Catholic TV (out of Boston). It is telecast live at 10am on Sundays but is also archived on the Catholic TV website.
DeleteMusically it is very close to an Anglican style liturgy with some Latin and English chant and polyphony. Homilies are decent by various priest faculty members at ND. Sometimes they are a little too student oriented, but you might not mind that.
ND used to also broadcast from the website the 11:30am ND Folk choir Mass which was Folk music with a classical flavor. They stopped that once Steve Warner the musician left to work in Ireland.
That is what I do on Sundays when snow and health problems make church going unwise. Of course I often worshiped in that church in the summers, and they always pray for me (and all the other ND alumni).
Jean, has the diocese made any plans for what happens with your parish once it no longer has a priest? I can see a couple of possibilities. One is that it would be closed and the people absorbed into a neighboring parish. Another is that it would be a mission, with pulpit supp!y priests to say a Sunday Mass. However option two would probably just delay option one.
DeleteThe parish will become a "chapel" of a nearby parish whose priest is also retiring this year, so everything is up in the air.
DeleteMy guess is that the Czechs will go to their ethnic parish a few miles north of us, across the diocesan line. The Germans will go back to parishes where they have family in the area.
This is the kind of place where, if your family hasn't lived here since the Old Country migration, you're an outsider.
I may just keep knitting for the Methodist ladies. They are great organizers and know all the hymns my Gramma taught me.
Our area is in the process of closing at least ten parishes. It's sad, but they were most of them tiny ethnic rural parishes from horse and buggy days. You can stand on one hill and see three steeples less than five miles apart. Everybody will still be ten miles or less from an active parish. Our town is fortunate to have three parishes, though we are down to four priests plus one retiree who sometimes helps out.
DeleteI think the people make it or break it, although a pastor can temporarily break it. We were in a parish in Kansas City in which the pastor would gladly have burned the church at the 10 o'clock Mass if that would bring the parish closer together. The comptroller convinced the bishop that he could squeeze more money out of the parish, and the pastor was retired and replaced by the comptroller. Who said he might feel compelled to see everybody's income tax returns. We moved back to Milwaukee, but most of the parishioners simply switched attendance to Rockhurst College. A few years later, the comptroller was gone, the old parishioners were back, the unpleasantness was over, and it is again a good thing to be part of.
ReplyDeleteA few years ago, I tried to think of everyone I knew at our current parish and ran out of steam at 240 names, although I added some over the next few days. Even with seven English Masses, there are always people to hug and kid around with before or after Mass on Sunday. In this case, one pastor spent 18 years, most of them before we got here, telling people it was their parish. They eventually believed him. We've had an international upset since he left, but the parish hasn't changed much. I've been to funerals for too many of that original 240, but I've probably added at least an equal number of replacements.
Of course, if that were not the case, we'd be in another parish. I pity the people in areas where parishes are few and choice is not an, ahem, option.
Tom, the American Grace research supports the idea that people make the parish. The religious social networks provide all the benefits (health, happiness, etc.), much larger benefits than other social networks. However, attending worship without the religious social networks doesn’t produce the benefits.
DeleteWhat makes religious networks different? It is not shared beliefs and values. No relationship of any beliefs or values to the benefits. It also does not matter what percentage of a religious social network are people of the same denomination.
My hunch is that what people experience in these religious networks is that people around them also have relationships to the transcendent even if those relationships are expressed very differently.
However, the study found that worship was essential; just meeting and praying in religious social networks was insufficient. Again my hunch is that what people experience in the larger worship setting is that many people are like themselves in having relationships to the transcendent.
My favorite observation (from Royal Palm Beach, Florida):
Delete"Personally, I've no problem with audio-visuals; I ignore them. But the screens are so big they couldn't be missed, and I notices that listening to St. Paul's run-on sentences while following them in print actually made it easier to get his point. That's a non-scientific datum, but I pass it on to liturgists for what it might be worth."
Jack, Your hunch resonates with me. When we started CHRP (Christ Renews His Parish -- never mind that that comes out to CRHP) retreats I was smitten by meeting people who had the same sorts of prayer life I do, especially among those whom I never would have suspected of it. We were CHRP 1, which means a somewhat select group, but I later worked on two traveling giving teams and saw the same sort of thing. It is BIG to find out you are not alone.
ReplyDeleteOur parish's pastoral team is pushing the living daylights out of small-group experiences, which seems good. Catholic disengagement should be a contradiction in terms. But it seems to be the norm. One of the deacons told me that the average parish has 6-to-9% actual participation beyond showing up on Sunday. I understand that some people find squeezing in even just Sunday Mass is itself difficult; I've been there, done that. But the causes of the difficulty change and eventually go away. The problem, istm, is getting people to see that the problem has gone away, and it's time to think about expanding one's presence.
I thought about this discussion when I watched this in PBS this evening. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/theres-better-way-help-asking-can-help/
ReplyDeleteI think churches that thrive are the ones full of people who love God's people by seeing a need and filling it without being asked.
Knowing what you can do ought to be a no-brainer to any properly catechized third grader. The Boy gave all his money to a friend in the hospital and wrote a card that said, "you will get well and we will take all this money to see Harry Potter and buy sonic games." (There might have been $7.59 in there, but it was everything, which is the point.)
So maybe the Church got through to him after all, much as he was bored out of his gourd at Mass.
I love your son's get well message!
DeleteThe emotional lives of little boys are quite deep. As an only child who came along when his cousins were already grown, I think he was always looking for that larger extended family and sense of belonging to more than his didactic father and distracted mother. The parish was unable to provide that. Band was his church for most of his young life.
DeleteSeems to me that band, AlAnon, and other groups I have observed close up, offer a model for a successful parish: have a goal that isn't allowed to become tainted with extraneous issues. Keep people on track, and give give everyone a part.
Agree about the emotional lives of little boys. I was impressed by how loyal my boys were to their friends. Girls are too, until they hit puberty. Then we go through a wacky phase, at least that was my observation. I had to learn friendship all over again later, still not sure I've got it right. My older boy still makes time to hang out with his bestie from high school, and he's 43. And yes, band is a good extended family, that's where those two boys met.
Delete"have a goal that isn't allowed to become tainted with extraneous issues. Keep people on track, and give give everyone a part." Pad that out to around 200 pages, keep it nondenominational, find a publisher or publish it yourself and you will have the next best thing to an annuity.
DeleteOh, I got lots of ideas that are just pure gold, Tom. All control freaks do. The problem is that we're just so insufferable, nobody wants to listen.
DeleteIf you live in the East Bay of San Francisco, of knows someone who does, and is parish shopping, here are 3 to consider:
ReplyDeletehttp://corpuschristipiedmont.org/
https://stcolumba-oak.com/
https://ctkph.org/
I can guarantee that the St. Columba's experience is something that 99% of white Catholics have never had in their lives. It is addicting, vibrant, committed and admits right up front that their principal mass on Sunday runs a MINIMUM of 90 minutes. The music, homilies, passing of the peace and offertory procession make the time fly by.
I grew up near the rural parish in Menominee, IL. It seems typical of that area. The 2 abutting dioceses (Madison, WI, and Rockford, IL, are "blessed" with retrograde bishops of the nth degree, both of whom allow communion to be distributed to the unwashed, unordained masses only via the host. And the people go along and get along and wilt on the vine.
ReplyDelete