Tensegrities

A painful weekend at church

I used to have lots of reasons why I would argue that it was possible to be a progressive and still be active in a local Catholic church. But I have to admit that lately it's becoming harder and harder to remember what they are. We've been a part of the IHM community since moving to St. Paul six years ago. I remember when we first moved, being struck -- especially after having lived in Boston for ten years -- by how vibrant and diverse the Roman Catholic churches and schools of the Twin Cities were.

We chose to become involved in a small church in our neighborhood -- not actually our parish church, but one about the same distance away -- and deeply enjoyed worshipping in this lively community. The faith formation program used Whole Community Catechesis, there was a deep commitment to social justice issues, music was lively and full of songs by Marty Haugen and David Haas, et. al., and there was real, intergenerational community. It was also a parish which drew its primary priestly leadership from the Jesuits, which tended to mean that we were blessed with thoughtful, probing blblical interpretations and preaching.

Almost two years ago, now, our parish underwent a change in priestly leadership. Our new priest, Joseph Weiss, S.J., came to us from Notre Dame University and people were excited by what they knew of his background and previous experiences. While it was true that many of us knew we'd miss our then-current priest, Chuck Burns, S. J., we also knew that our community was strong and financially stable, and we looked forward to new ventures.

I'm trying very hard right now to remember that energy, because it's all completely dissipated, and I fear we are on the brink of parish closure. Over the last two years many members of our parish have left in frustration and joined other churches, and this weekend it's hard for me to remember why I shouldn't do so, too. At the close of liturgy on Sunday morning, Joe read a letter from the pastoral council (a body that exists in a solely advisory capacity and by canon law has no real authority to do anything) that announced that both our faith formation director and our social justice minister would be leaving at the end of June.

That bland announcement sent shock waves through many of us who have tried to remain. Ostensibly the issue is finances, or lack thereof, but the reality is that our parish has been steadily losing ground ever since our new priest arrived, and at every turn he shut down collaboration with layfolk, rather than empowering it. In my own personal experience, I can list several instances in which his direct actions led me to back away from involvement, rather than moving toward it.

In his first year in the parish, he failed to preside at a single one of the Holy Week liturgies. Given that he is in the very difficult position of serving two quite different parishes, it's only to be expected that he wouldn't be at all of our liturgies. But none of them during Holy Week?

That same season he asked that only appropriately credentialled people (that is, folks with degrees in theology -- like me) contribute to the Lenten reflection booklet. Given how powerful many of the previous booklets had been, and how much deep reflection had been offered by non-credentialled people, this request cut deep.

Several months into his pastorate he sought to find ways to combine the several weekend liturgies spread over two church buildings into a more manageable number. He sent out a survey with several options, and awaited the results. The results came back quite strongly in favor of one specific option which had been posed -- a result that was striking and quite encouraging to many of us across the two parishes. Our priest then chose, instead, to implement a quite different option that hadn't even been on the survey.

This past year we faced difficult financial pressures because we lost a prime tenant in our school building. Rather than embark on a parish-wide campaign to beef up our finances, or search for new tenants, there were surly complaints in the parish newsletter -- and then the sale of our only other piece of real estate, a rectory on graceful Summit Avenue, worth more than a million dollars.

These examples don't even begin to touch on the fact that he eliminated several more controversial practices of our parish -- having the priest come down and hold hands with us during the Lord's Prayer, allowing laypeople to preach on occasion, having an Advent wreath within our sanctuary, etc. etc.

Whatever financial difficulties we've encountered -- and there are certainly reasons for us to be worried -- it's the lack of lay involvement that has really hurt us, and that dwindling of participation can be directly linked to the advent of this new priest. Sigh.

I wish I could believe that this trend could be changed, but in the Catholic church lay people have no structural power at all. So the only way we can resist such leadership is through guerrilla actions, which require clear and conscious participation and creative energy on the part of the whole community. Given who's left, I don't think this will happen. Instead what is happening is that people are slowly giving up on this place and moving to other parishes. But that trend means that progressives are becoming ever more concentrated in a small, limited number of parishes -- and I suspect that it will be that much easier to close those down, when the time comes.

More than ever I am becoming convicted of the necessity of building up strong, small house churches. Such communities can sustain us while we continue to participate in parishes, and as we struggle with the institutional church's unwillingness to take laypeople seriously. But what else can we do? I'd like to figure out what "ecclesiastical civil disobedience" might look like, and I'd especially like to hear stories of constructive efforts from other churches across the country. Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated!

Posted by hessma at May 29, 2006 03:35 PM