Let me preface the homily text with a couple of remarks for the NewGathering group: The point of departure for this homily is an intensely local news item. I don't suppose it would be of interest to someone who is not a stakeholder in the very-small-potatoes local dispute. But then, I didn't suppose that my parishioners, who are not stakeholders themselves, would be interested, either - I was using the anecdote in order to set the table to talk about something else. But it turns out that I stumbled into something: some of my parishioners are very interested in it, judging by the comments I've been getting (and now emails - and when people feel compelled to email me about a homily, that's a sign that I've struck a nerve, or a sore, or something). Just speaking for myself, my engagement with political news is pretty much inversely proportional to how local it is: I read a lot about national and world issues, a good deal less about state issues, and when it comes to the operations of local government - zoning boards, school boards, and the like - I'm pretty much uninformed. So I related the local news item that starts this homily in the spirit of simply restating what I had read in the newspaper, supposing it would be news, and not very interesting news, for everyone else. Silly me - it turns out that some people not only were already aware of it, they were already hot under the collar about it, and now can't stop talking to me about it. Just one more proof that a homilist learns more than he teaches when pursuing his art. And, I suppose, further proof that people remember what you say first and forget everything else: what has them all hot and bothered wasn't really supposed to be the point of the talk - the point is supposed to be about encountering the risen Jesus.
I should also clarify that, for some reason, in the Chicago area, many suburbs style themselves "villages", even though some of them, including ours, are pretty large municipalities in their own right.
The text of the homily follows.
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(Hold up
newspaper)
This is the
front section of the Daily Herald newspaper from this past Wednesday. The news
story at the very top of the front page is about our neighbors to the south,
St. James Parish along Arlington Heights Road.
The headline reads, “St. James Parish can begin razing school building”. I know you probably can’t make out the words
from where you’re sitting, so I should explain that “razing” is spelled
r-a-z-i-n-g, which means to destroy or demolish. The village has given the parish permission
to knock down its old school building.
Some of my
children went to St. James School, so I’m familiar with what they’re doing. A few years ago, St. James built a new elementary
school across the street from the old school building, so the old building is
mostly unused now. St. James also has a
beautiful church, but it’s too small for the parish – they have to hold some of
their weekend masses in the school gym. So
they’re going to clear away the old school building to open up space to expand
the church and add some more parking spaces.
Much of this
news story is an account of the village board meeting at which the parish was
given permission to proceed with their plan.
It seems that the evening wasn’t dispute-free. The story notes, “Village
trustees also required the parish to pay the $2,000 annual cost to maintain an
existing traffic light they believe primarily benefits the church and its
school.” You might be familiar with that
traffic light along Arlington Heights Road, close to the church and the school. When my kids were in school there, there were
school kids crossing back and forth across Arlington Heights Road throughout the
school day.
It seems
that St. James’s pastor, Fr. Matt Foley, didn’t take that $2,000 annual
assessment lying down. And apparently he
had done his homework. The story states that
Fr. Foley pointed out that “Northwest Community Hospital, for instance, isn’t
held to the same standard – and doesn’t have to pay for the signal at the
entrance to its property.” I can see Fr.
Foley’s point: ‘the hospital doesn’t have to pay for its traffic light; why
should St. James have to pay for one?’
So, as a
picture of local government engaging with its citizens, this is all mildly
interesting, but here is the part of the news story that made me hit the pause
button and think for a minute: the story continues, “most of the village board
members disagreed with Fr. Foley, because the hospital provides emergency
medical care to the community.”
I can’t
speak for the village trustees, but they seem to be saying, “The hospital is
more important than your parish and your school. So we’ll pay for the one traffic light but
not the other.”
Now let me
just say: I’m not here to criticize the trustees. It seems to me that both sides in this
dispute were looking out for their respective constituencies. And I don’t think the trustees are wrong
about the importance of the hospital. All
my children were born there, and it has always taken good care of my family. I know many of our parishioners use the
hospital, too, and some of you work there.
I’m pro-hospital.
But I’m also
pro-Catholic parishes and Catholic schools.
And if I could have been there next to Fr. Foley during this meeting –
which would have been foolish of him, because I’m the kind of person who speaks
up when he should just be quiet - I
would have argued that, as important as the hospital is to the life of this
community, what we do here in Catholic churches is every bit as important. Maybe even more important.
How’s that,
you say? What we do is as important as
what a hospital does? Does that seem a
little far-fetched to you? If you were
to point out to me that the hospital saves lives, I’d respond that parishes and
schools change lives – and for the
better. Better for our people, better
for our children, and better for our community.
How can that
be? How can it be that what we do here,
and what St. James does over there, is as important as what a hospital
does? My answer would be: we help you
encounter Jesus. And that’s pretty
important.
Our Gospel reading tonight tells us about
encounters with Jesus. First Peter and
Andrew, and then James and John, encountered Jesus. And what happens? Well, they didn’t turn back to their fishing
nets. Their lives changed. And not just a little change. The whole trajectory of the rest of their
lives shot off in a different direction.
They literally walked away from their nets and their boats. They became followers of Jesus. They became apostles. After Jesus ascended into heaven, they became
the leaders of the Jesus movement, the stewards of his message and the
proclaimers of his Good News. Scripture
and tradition tell us that, eventually, they each died for their faith in Jesus. That’s a big life change.
Jesus calls
to us, too, and when we respond, our lives change. And our lives are better for it.
I don’t
believe I know any of our Arlington Heights trustees personally, but if I could
get them in here to listen to me for a few minutes, I’d remind them that human
beings consist of both a body and a soul.
If your body becomes ill or injured, by all means, go the hospital. That’s the proper place to have your body
tended to. Personally, I think it’s
right and good that our community should support our local hospital, for that
very reason. But if it is your soul that
is sickened, if it is your soul, that innermost core of your being, that has
been wounded in some way, then the hospital isn’t really the place for
you. Church is. And here, or at St. James, you can avail
yourself of the potent medicines we offer: the different ways of encountering the
risen Jesus. We offer the grace of
forgiveness, through baptism and penance.
We offer friendship and love among fellow disciples. We offer the powerful Word of God, which will
console you or move you or set your heart on fire. We offer the body and blood of Jesus, to
provide your soul with sacramental nourishment. We offer education to our children, to teach
them the truths of our faith and to know right from wrong. And here we serve our brothers and sisters who
are in need in our community. In all
these ways and in many others, churches like St. Edna and St. James complement
the work that our hospitals do. And we
do it by mediating encounters with Jesus.
Hospitals tend bodies; we tend souls.
Our community needs both.
If I could get our trustees to hang out here, I'd invite them to reflect on how parishes and schools make our individual lives better, make our families better, and make our communities better. My message to them would be: let's continue to support our hospital. But let's provide appropriate support to our churches and schools, too. Because nothing changes our lives for the better like encountering Jesus. And here, and at St. James, that's exactly what we do.
The question is not whether or not an institution benefits lives. Walmart and other commercial establishments could probably argue that they are benefiting lives, too.
ReplyDeleteThe question is whether the people should subsidize an institution (hospital, school, or church, business) that benefits some people but not others.
Why shouldn't the customers who use the services pay for the traffic light that benefits them?
Nonprofits often get a lot of tax benefits, e.g. police, fire protection, while paying little in terms of taxes. I would have told the trustees to tax the hospital too.
Jack - yes, of course Walmart and other employers and retailers benefit the lives of the people in the community. Around here, it seems that most Walmarts have traffic lights at their entrances, because of the high volume of traffic that the stores generate. Towns have been known to undertake road expansion, adding additional lanes, turn lanes and the like, to accommodate the traffic flow in and out of Walmart. I assume that Walmart isn't assessed directly for any of those improvements. To be sure, Walmart is not a non-profit, and presumably the retail sales that it generates also generates sales tax revenue for the municipality. On the other hand, when Walmart comes into a local market, it is also thought to injure or even extinguish existing small businesses (although a recent story about a spate of Sam's Club closings complicates that picture; it seems that Sam's Club is also an important supplier for small businesses), whereas a Catholic parish doesn't compete with anyone's business - we're not even very good at competing with other churches for members :-)
DeleteBut, while I didn't pursue this point in the homily, I would also make the argument that Catholic parishes, and especially Catholic schools, benefit the community by forming good citizens. It's pretty common, in all the places I've lived (especially when growing up, when I lived in a series of towns with poor-performing public school systems), that Catholics, and especially products of Catholic education, are political, community and business leaders. In my hierarchy of importance, I'd rate the formation of good citizens (the Catholic church) as a higher priority than offering groceries and home goods at cut-rate prices (Walmart).
Jim, yes, communities do jump through hoops to get Walmart to come in. And then end up losing other businesses. As our community found out, Walyworld is a mixed blessing.
Delete"I lived in a series of towns with poor-performing public school ... and products of Catholic education, are political, community and business leaders. In my hierarchy of importance, I'd rate the formation of good citizens (the Catholic church) as a higher priority than offering groceries and home goods at cut-rate prices (Walmart)."
DeleteYeah, but where are the poor slobs whose parents had to settle for the crummy public school education gonna shop? It takes a village, Jim, and while the Catholic school graduates are busy being upstanding, that village needs a Walmart where everyone else can buy their beer and BBQ pork rinds on the cheap.
Of course the point of your homily was about the benefits of the church community, both to its members, and the broader community rather than the controversy about the stop light.
ReplyDeleteBut regarding things such as stop lights, those are about public safety and avoiding accidents. A stop light at a church intersection doesn't just benefit church members. It ensures traffic safety for anyone traveling the road that the church entrance/exit intersects. The church members pay taxes even if the parish itself doesn't. It's in the best interests of the community to have safe roads.
Speaking of traffic safety and people doing dumb things; yours truly went to work this morning at 6:30 in the middle of a blizzard, only to find out that the day shift had been cancelled. Guess I should have called the recording first, but it really didn't seem *that* bad. When I did call it, the voice informed me that it was July 22, and due to a blizzard, first shift was cancelled. Who knew a snow day in July!
DeleteKatherine, I am so sorry to hear that! When I was going to night school in the '90s, two different times I drove to school after work through a blizzard - with Chicago rush hour, it was a two hour drive in pristine conditions - only to find out, when I arrived, that they had cancelled class. Grrr. Then I had to drive another two hours through the blizzard to get home.
DeleteHope you get a paid day off. I work from my home office these days, so every day is a snow day :-), albeit a working one.
Jim, yeah, I get paid for the day anyway. Around here we usually just power through bad weather, but this storm's a little worse than usual.
DeleteI don't want to argue with what Jim said, but having been a community reporter for many years, I will offer that Catholic churches are seen by the public-at-large as existing largely for themselves, not the good of the general community.
ReplyDeleteThis is especially true if the church has a school. The assumption of non-Catholic voters, rightly or wrongly, is that parents of Catholic pupils always vote down millages because their kids don't go to the public institutions.
The "soul sickness hospital" argument works only among those who see a Catholic Church as working tangible good for everyone in the community. For example, does the church have a soup kitchen, a respected day care center, or some other visible public program that addresses a community need?
While I am alive to the argument that taxpayers owe it to all citizens to implement orderly traffic patterns wherever snags occur, and I believe that taxpaying Catholics deserve a street light as much as any other group, comparing the church to a hospital just ain't gonna wash in our secular society where most people can't afford private education, and the local church is seen as a closed community serving only Catholics.
Jean, you're right that my homily was not intended to be a pitch to the local board of trustees - it was pitched to a gathering of disciples. But at some point, on some level, churches do need to be prepared to explain to the general public that they benefit the general public, and are not simply private clubs whose benefits are only for members.
DeleteThe hospital is open to anyone in the community. The same is true of the church and school. I'm sure you're right that most of the community doesn't perceive the church and the school that way. A big part of that is that the Catholic church continues to be a poor evangelizer - we need to let the community know that the community is welcome. That song "All Are Welcome" - I really believe that stuff.
"All Are Welcome" is a more vexed question for those of us with Protestant relatives who are seated in a special area for First Communions and Confirmations. The Church ladies want to keep them separate so that people aren't "crawling over each other" to get back in their seats after communion. I guess that's related to your traffic flow issue, however tenuously. :-)
DeleteSome folks with homes across from our local parish put up a huge sign several weeks running that read "Catholics drive too fast! Watch for children!"
Those leaving Mass like bats out of hell were careless of pedestrians, and the parish installed speed bumps and signs to slow the flow.
Stop lights in a town of 1,700 would have been an extravagance.
Jean, I think your pastor needs to put his foot down. On the church ladies' necks. Segregation went out in 1956, not that there aren't some in high places who would bring it back.
DeleteJean, sometimes I would like to send your church ladies across Stanley's railroad trestle ...
DeleteThe Church Ladies have always run that parish. We get part-time priests on their way to retirement or heaven because we're so dinky, and they're no match for Church Ladies. Current priest has been on hospice for two years, so he sure doesn't have the strength to deal with anything. When he dies, we will merge with another parish. It will be interesting to see what happens to Church Lady contingent.
DeleteWhat if the hospital were a Catholic hospital? What if it were a Catholic hospital that refuses to do abortions? What if it were a fundamentalist school that believes children should take their chances like adults, and if they are killed by a car they will go to heaven and the driver will go to prison, and God will be satisfied?
ReplyDeleteIf I never use the hospital, do I still have too pay something toward the light if my wife goes there? Maybe I pay less if my cousin uses the hospital? Should people who never use a street pay for the traffic lights on it? Or should their taxes be prorated according to the traffic lights they do use? But what if the truck delivering my stuff from Amazon uses a light I don't use myself?
Or do we all pay for things we don't use as a cost of living in a civilized society?
Tom, quite right. The fact is, the hospital serves people from other towns, and not everyone from this town uses that hospital. And most of the children who go to the Catholic school in question have parents who live in the town and pay taxes and are entitled to whatever municipal benefits other citizens are entitled to, including traffic safety.
DeleteBack in the 60's, I attended Monsignor Bonner H.S in Drexel Hill, PA, boys only. Next to it, Archbishop Prendergast H.S., girls only. I, along with some, walked along a stretch of low usage railroad tracks on my way back and forth. At the time, Catholic school students couldn't use public school busses. There was one fatality when a runaway freight car killed a girl from Prendie. Overall, I still enjoyed the walk except the part where I had to gather up my books, trumpet and french horn and hotfoot it over the trestle, making sure to step on the ties and not fall inbetween. I had this vision of myself wedged between the ties while a train came around the bend. "I hear the train acomin', rollin' round the bend."
ReplyDeleteOh, my gosh, Stanley, let us not go back to the days of yore. I crossed a rickety golfers' bridge over the Evanston Drainage Canal from second grade through eighth as part of a walk that included the length of the 14th hole (the water hole) and width of the 13th hole of the Evanston Community Golf Course, through the snows of a Lake Michigan winter. We all survived and were the better for it. If parents made their kids do that today, they would be stopped forthwith. Not for the good of the children but to hold down the insurance premiums of the golf course.
ReplyDeleteI can't whine too much about my journeys to school since I was dropped off at the school door by a parent or grandparent. But I actually envied my mother's stories of riding her pony to their one room schoolhouse.
DeleteTom had it easy in Evanston! Every kid in CHICAGO had to walk 10 miles uphill (both ways) to school. We were a hardy lot!
DeleteRemember Sen. Fred Harris? D-Oklahoma. Thought about running for president. Did seek the nomination once. Wife was 100% Indian. Good guy of utterly no interest to the big funders. Anyhow, he wrote a campaign biography. In the introduction he talked about how he had told their kids about the agony of walking 5 miles to school and back, uphill both ways. One day they got close to home, and so he told the kids to watch the odometer while they took this awful trip in a car. I think the result was something line 1.2 miles. He got my vote with that story.
DeleteTom, did you live along Lincoln? That's pretty snooty real estate these days.
DeleteJim, No. When I went to the lake I had to walk, oh miles and miles. I did get all my commie socialist ideas growing up in Evanston in the shadow of Tribune Tower and Col. R. R. McCormick's (Oh, had he lived to see the day of Trump!) crochets and evasions.
DeleteWhoops, senior moment, Jim. When you wrote Lincoln, I thought Sheridan Road. I didn't live near Lincoln, either. We lived in an area of Evsnston known as "Frogtown." It's most notable institutions were Marywood, a Catholic girls' school (now apparently no more), and the Calvin Coolidge Club of which my father was secretary, which is a really long story that even my kids won't sit still for.
DeleteMy family isn't exactly a country family, but I grew up in Jackson County, MI on a dirt road, with a cornfield abutting the back of our property. But we attended the Catholic school in town. Every morning we walked a quarter mile to the end of the road, where we caught a school bus on the paved road. The bus then drove all over the county for about an hour, picking up all the other Catholic school country kids.
DeleteOne time, during a snowstorm, my dad tried to make it down the road on a Sunday morning in our old station wagon to get to 7:30 am mass. I don't know what his criteria are for missing Sunday mass without incurring mortal sin, but apparently a raging snowstorm doesn't reach the bar. He got stuck about a hundred feet from the end of the road - couldn't go forward, couldn't go backward. So he left the car in the middle of the road and trudged back home. Consequently, the next day, the snow plow couldn't get down our road. The neighbors hated us. The car sat there for about four days until the snow had melted enough for him to move it.
Tom you've certainly piqued my interest about the Calvin Coolidge Club. I see that his first veep, Charles Dawes, was a prominent Evanston resident, but I read that Coolidge couldn't stand him, so there seem to be layers of possible meaning there :-)
DeleteDawes seems to have been one of those go-getters who went to law school, elevated himself to titan of industry, then a general, then a politician and finally an ambassador and statesman. He won the Nobel Peace Prize for a plan, which Coolidge rejected(!), to lift Germany's war reparations burden. Who knows what would have happened had it been enacted?
He was also a composer. Here is Fritz Kreisler playing his "Melody in A Major", which, judging by a couple of Youtube comments, may have been the melodic inspiration for the '50s popular tune "All in the Game".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d1t36lBli0
There is a charming bio about Grace Coolidge at the Coolidge Foundation's web site. I have a soft spot for energetic Republican lady do-gooders. She died of complications from kyphoscoliosis, so she must have done all that stuff in incredible pain at times, bless her heart. Sounds like Silent Cal was very lucky in his marriage.
Deletehttps://coolidgefoundation.org/presidency/grace-coolidge-overview/
I agree with Jean. But there is one issue that might change my opinion. I went back and re-read what you wrote - this is an already existing traffic light, yes? If it is, and if the church/school have never before been assessed for its maintenance, then perhaps there is a different issue to be argued here. If it wasn't the church's responsibility up until now, why would it be the church's responsibility going forward?
ReplyDeleteAnne, you're right - it's an existing traffic light. I don't know whether the parish pays for it today, but based on the news story, I assume it doesn't. It's an important question, though.
Delete