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+# The American Parish
+
+In a modern city parish many people do not find what they are looking
+for. Many of those who are dissatisfied never voice their disappointment;
+many do not even realize they are disappointed. Some put the blame
+for their dissatisfaction on the pastor, the bishop or the trustee of the
+Church. The pastor again and his assistants, if ever they become conscious of their people’s criticism, put the blame on their parishioners’
+unreasonable requests or ungenerous help.
+
+Do people look to their parish for things the parish could not offer or
+does the modern city parish fundamentally not offer what it should?
+More practical inquiries might be directed toward the study of methods. Here we ask the more fundamental “what” should be offered and
+leave the “how” to other articles.
+
+Take Jose, I met him one Sunday when, during the eleven o’clock
+high Mass, I went out through the main door of our Church. There I saw
+him among five darkaired and bronzekinned people. From far away
+you could have guessed their origin, the origin of 37% of the baptized
+Catholics in New York City, Puerto Rico. Why had they come to Church
+and then remained outside? Had they gone in or were they waiting for
+the next Mass? They were all standing in a little group and talking lethargically. I went up to them and said “que tal” which means “Hi,” and slowly
+they turned around, looking at me. After a few more words their eyes
+began to sparkle. Before they had been completely unrelated to the surroundings: their dresses were almost imperceptibly differently cut from
+those of the other parishioners, their language was different and while
+the others were in Church they were outside. Now suddenly, through
+a few Spanish words they seemed related to their surroundings. They
+started to speak: they all came from Moca, a little place in the hills of that
+beautiful island; they had arrived here in New York just a few weeks ago.
+They had found out where the Church was, and when they looked at it
+they would not believe that it was a Catholic Church: a Church had to
+be in the middle of a plaza, in the middle of the village, the center of a
+community. Here they had found a building with some strange pointed
+arches in the middle of two tall houses right on a booming street.
+The Church inside was dark, with light strangely colored from
+stainedlass windows, instead of the simple, whitewashed structure—
+with wide openings for windows to let in as much air as possible—that
+they were used to. But they had recognized this as a Catholic church,
+because, upon an inspection, they had found the picture of Our Lady
+of Perpetual Help on one of the altars; and that much they knew, where
+that picture was, there had to be Our Lord. They had discovered the
+picture on a weekday evening, and now on Sunday they had come back
+to the Church, they had wanted to go to Mass. Now why did they not go
+in and follow Mass? I asked them, and got an answer which baffled me.
+They said, because of the ushers. They had never been accompanied to
+a pew by an usher. Oftentimes they had no pews in Church. Here they
+saw parishioners paying their way into Church. They didn’t realize that
+these people—or their parents—had built this church by themselves, that
+they now felt responsible for its support and maintenance, that it was
+not like Puerto Rico where the government had built churches until the
+Americans arrived. So they had turned away from Church because of the
+ushers, as one of them said; because Mass starts so much on time, the
+other said, Our Lady was there, they said—but the warmth and the life
+of the people seemed lacking.
+
+I could not help thinking back to Puerto Rico; my first Sunday there
+in a big parish, in the mountains. On Saturday the pastor asked me say
+Mass the next day in the mountains, in three different mission chapels
+(he had twelve altogether), since he would have to say the Masses in the
+main village. If there was a priest around to help out, every four weeks
+Mass was said on Sunday in every chapel. The first Mass I said at about
+six in the morning, after I had slept all night on the altar steps of the
+chapel, then I travelled on, by horseback, to the next chapel. I heard
+confessions, said Mass, baptized, married . . . and off I went to the third
+chapel, on horseback still, where I arrived after noon. People were sitting
+around in Church eating their bananas and chewing cane, and on the
+Church steps they had lighted a little fire to cook something. They continued their conversation in Church while I heard confessions; for Mass
+everybody was silent and most of them knelt on the crude floor while two
+lonely dogs ran around among them, and when I started to baptize the
+conversation resumed. In the evening, I was amazed at the answer I got
+from the pastor, a Puerto Rican trained in a United States seminary, to my
+question as to whether he thought this behavior slightly disrespectful:
+Our people believe that God is their Father, and they want to behave in
+Church as they behave in their Father’s house. There are no ushers in
+Jose’s Father’s house. Dinner does not start on time, probably he has no
+watch, he goes to Church when everybody else goes to Church. Mass is an
+important happening in the family’s life—a happening which brings him
+together with all his neighbors. The Church is the center of his village
+even if he seldom goes into it. The rare Sunday when the priest comes to
+his chapel, the Mass is a big event, even if he does not attend. He knows
+almost everybody whom he meets at Mass. Mass is easily understood as
+a family dinner—as the “communion” of the community.
+
+## Another World
+
+No wonder that he is confused at this big, clean, Gothic building where
+an usher assigns him his place next to some unknown lady, where he
+is allowed to go into Church only five minutes before Mass starts, and
+has to leave as soon as Mass is over—where hardly anybody is standing
+outside the Church after Mass since there is no plaza—and where there
+are so many Masses that you cannot see Mass as a family dinner, a house
+built around you, to suit you.
+
+Standing there on that cold winter morning during the eleven o’clock
+high Mass, I realized how hard it will be to explain to Jose and his friends
+that this is the same Church which, under another climate, appears so
+very different from at home. It will be hard for Jose to understand that
+he will be known to God alone in Church and hardly anybody else will
+recognize him. It will be hard for him to understand that you can go to
+Holy Communion every day in a Church where there are several Masses
+every day, and hard, too, to understand the English Gospel the priest
+reads, but even more difficult than to understand will it be for him to
+feel at home in English. I might be able to make him understand some
+of the features of parish life—but to understand a world is far from being
+at home in it. And how strange that a man should not feel at home in
+the house of his Father. How strange to each other two Catholic worlds
+can be. It is not always easy to see how beautiful it is that the universal
+Church can look so different in different cultures.
+
+Or think of Maria, Jose’s sister: she came with him to Mass, and with
+him was frightened away from the Church. Now she cannot believe that
+this is the communion mass of the Children of Mary. Where are their
+white veils? Why do they not sing, does nobody here know the song of
+Our Lady of Guadalupe? And why do people now start to come out of
+Church, and without talking to each other go straight across the busy,
+dirty street headed for home? Why do they not hang around and talk to
+each other? Jose and his friends cannot well avoid being bewildered.
+
+## Dissatisfied Children
+
+This is but one of the many instances into which you run continually, as
+a parish priest, of people who do not find in their parish what they came
+to look for. Jose’s problem is not from this point of view different from the
+bewilderment of the convert, who during instructions has found faith in
+the reality of the Mystical Body visible in Christ’s Church—and then finds
+himself socially isolated among faithful churchgoers. And it is not different from the problem of the mature layman exposed to years of sermons
+taken from Father Murphy’s Three Homilies for Every Sunday Gospel—or of
+the young couple recently moved into a new apartment, who had hoped to
+find in the parish an atmosphere in which spiritual friendship is fostered,
+and found perfect distribution of sacraments, ritual and Catholic school
+education, but not the spirit they had hoped for.
+
+To all these this parish does not give what they expect: to Jose it
+does not give the atmosphere of his home, to the convert it does not
+give the new human community he thought would be a consequence of
+spiritual communion, to the man yearning to grow it does not give the
+adult education program he hoped for, but only an endless repetition of
+what he has become insensible to through yearly recital in grade school
+catechism. It forces the young couple to make their own home a shelter
+for friendship without adequate help from the pastor from whom they
+expect it.
+
+All these people come to the parish because there they find what
+seems to them most important: Mass, the confessional, and catechism
+for their children. Objections are directed not against the things they get,
+but rather against the frame within which they get them: Mass remains
+the sacrifice even if it is said quickly and adorned with a hasty sermon.
+Your sins are forgiven even if the priest is too rushed to give advice—and
+most people are so used to a silent confessor that they might be surprised
+at an instruction. Catechism remains true even if Sister has sixty children
+in her parochial school class. Marriage remains valid even if all the bride
+remembers of prenuptial instruction is that an overburdened priest, in
+ten minutes, asked her under oath a few strange questions, such as: had
+she ever been to a psychiatrist, would she be faithful to her husband,
+would she promise to avoid contraception, while at the same time he had
+to answer the phone on a sick call and take care of a staggering visitor at
+the door.
+
+Is there something which could be interpreted as a criticism of the
+whole system underlying all these objectionable details? Criticism of
+detail is directed mostly against the officiating priest, not against the
+parish as such, and therefore is not pertinent to this discussion.
+
+## Criteria for Criticism
+
+Could it be that there is something fundamentally wrong with the parish
+in modern America? And if that be so, may Christians, especially laymen,
+criticize their Church, of which the unit most real to them is the parish?
+Many are afraid to do so out of a double misunderstanding: they do not
+distinguish between criticism and blame—and they do not distinguish
+the human from the divine element in the Church.
+
+We cannot remain forever small children and take our parents for
+granted; only after the teens can a mature love for a parent develop. It’s
+the same with Mother Church: an understanding of her humanity in
+her human weakness will only strengthen, not diminish our love. Those
+who blame the Church mostly shrink from the personal responsibility
+which grows out of the realization that we are members of the Church.
+Blame is a fruit of laziness and perpetuates what is deplorable. Criticism
+brings about change, either in him who criticizes or in the Church criticized. It is always the fruit of hard work and prayer. A critical attitude
+toward the parish is just one of the areas in which Christian love for the
+Church can develop. But since criticism is always an implicit invitation
+to change, we have to pass to the second point and see to what degree the
+Church, or, concretely, the parish, is subject to change. And there are two
+attitudes toward change, equally unChristian, among Christians. One
+is the refusal of any development. This has its roots in a deep mistrust
+of human nature, as if God had not entrusted men with the power to
+make His institutions practicable, as if the mandate given to the apostles
+had been withdrawn. This mistrust lies in this error: necessary historical
+developments are taken for divine institutions. Manade frames are
+taken for divine works of art. This attitude can be remedied by the study
+of theology and history. Theology will show us the seed of divine revelation and will teach us what God has done Himself; history will show us
+what men have done under God.
+
+Opposed to the refusal of any development is the attitude of those
+who always want to change, who are like children who do not want to live
+in the dusty home their family built over centuries, and prefer to live in a
+quickly built shack on the edges of the property. If this attitude does not
+have its root in the unstable character of its proponents, it is based on an
+over estimation of human inventiveness within God’s supernatural plan.
+The remedy to this inclination toward inorganic and sudden changes lies
+in an education toward humility. Custom always offers an assumption
+for wisdom, at least practical wisdom. Criticism of the modern parish
+therefore presupposes some knowledge of theology and of history, which
+often becomes visible in custom.
+
+## Follow the Man to His House . . . to the Upper Room
+
+Unless we know how a country grew, we do not know what it really is
+like. Unless we know what the parish was meant to be by God, and what
+it looked like when men first made God’s idea visible, we will not have
+the basis to judge the parish we have today. How did the parish start?
+Certainly not with the apostles.
+
+Christ did not make the parish. He made priests, and He needed a
+roof over His cenacle. (The priesthood is instituted by Christ, not the
+boundaries to His priesthood, expressed in modern parish limits.) For
+centuries, the Church was expanding—conscious that the end of the
+world was nigh. Every bishop grazed his flock, and whenever possible
+had a flock small enough that he himself could say Mass for them. The
+imagery for pastoral care as well as the relationship between pastor
+(the bishop was the only pastor) and his faithful was taken from the
+vocabulary of shepherds, Mediterranean shepherds, who have no fixed
+home and wander with their sheep from pasture to pasture—from earth
+to heaven. Christians considered themselves as strangers in a strange
+world, children banned from their country. The word “parish” came from
+a Greek verb meaning: to live like a foreigner—to be without a home.
+
+## The Cenacle Among Nonhristians
+
+The twelve apostles found it necessary to ordain one man in every community to the fullness of the priesthood. This man, the bishop of the city,
+made the rounds and celebrated the sacred mysteries in the houses of
+different Christians. In the Stationhurches of Rome we have a remnant
+of this usage: the oldest among them carry the names of private families,
+and their name expresses nothing but the address at which the Christians
+would meet for Mass. In these homes Mass would be said regularly, and
+often the room in which Mass was said slowly developed into a chapel—
+the family ceased to use it as a dining room and the cenacle grew into a
+Church. The number of Christians too, continually was growing. Soon
+one pastor, the bishop, was not enough for the community, and so we see
+several popes ordaining priests—priests who would say Mass where the
+bishop could not go and who would preach whenever the bishop would
+not find the time to do so. Often these priests attended one particular
+Church in preference to others, but we cannot yet say that they were
+pastors. The bishop still was the only pastor in the city, and these priests
+were his assistants. Pope Innocent I in 417 tells us that he was in the
+habit of breaking his host, when saying Mass, into small fragments and
+sending one of these fragments to every priest celebrating in the city of
+Rome, that he might let it fall into his chalice and might realize that it
+is really one Mass said throughout the city, the Mass of the bishop. The
+breaking of the host into three parts today is a remnant of that custom.
+
+## The Parish as the Heart of the City
+
+From the beginning, Christianity developed faster in the cities than in
+the country. But by the end of the 5th century Christianity had expanded
+into new mission territories, and the last strongholds of paganism in the
+rural areas of southern Europe were falling by the 7th century. Always
+more and more bishops asked their priests to take over independently
+the exercise of their ministry. No more was the bishop the only father
+and the priest nothing but his helpers; the priests themselves had to take
+over under their bishops all three realms of pastoral duties: the administration of the sacraments, the teaching of the Gospel and the guidance
+of the people.
+
+Of old when every city where Christians lived had its own bishop (or
+“angel” as St. John calls him in his seven letters to the seven “Churches”
+in Asia Minor), dioceses had been multiplied easily and eagerly. This is
+the reason why there are so many of them in the countries which came
+to the faith before the 6th century. Now the bishop made every one of his
+priests responsible for a welletermined part of his people and slowly,
+clearly assigned the limits to the territory for which a priest was responsible—boundaries which often on one side remained open toward the
+virgin soil never yet touched by Christian preaching.
+
+The parish as a living cell of the diocese had been brought into existence by the Church. Christ had instituted His priesthood for His people.
+In apostolic times the Church found it necessary to assign a given part of
+her Mystical Body to a given bishop. He alone is priest in the full sense of
+the word, he alone belongs to the teaching Church, he alone is a successor
+of the apostles, he alone wears the wedding ring to show that he is married to the Church. And later on the Church found it necessary to allow
+the bishop to subdivide his territory and to make his representatives,
+other priests, fully responsible for a parish.
+This is how the territorial parish was born, to which belong all those
+who live in a given territory, and for whom the pastor assumes responsibility: to feed, teach and guide those who are in the Church and to
+convert those who are outside. It went so far that in Europe the word
+“parish” became the word for “village.”
+
+Human factors contributed not less than supernatural faith to make
+the parish the heart of the community in Catholic countries. The priest
+quite often was the most educated person in the village, custom and folklore centered in the Church and civil life was regulated by the progress
+of the liturgical year as the life of every individual was deeply connected
+with the Church in the middle of the village. Often also—sometimes
+unfortunately—the church became a center for political action. Later
+a breakdown in these human factors threatened to remove the parish
+from its central position in the hearts of the people. And then came the
+Reformation, and with it the Catholic community of Europe was broken
+down. From then on we can hardly speak of a common development of
+the parish in different countries. We cannot make it our objective here
+to study the reasons which brought about the “loss of the masses” in
+France, or the motives which made the German parish so susceptible to
+the “liturgical movement,” or the final juridical organization that Pius X
+(the first pastor in a long time to become pope) brought about in 1917.
+Our objective is to understand historically only those elements common
+to the American parish—and not those minor elements, as important
+as they might be, which shaped the characteristic face of this or that
+national parish. After all, we are in search of the common denominator—
+if there is one—of most criticism voiced by Catholics against the Church
+in this country.
+
+## The Protective Parish
+
+The American parish—if we can speak about such a thing—was always
+established as a center around which a minority rallied: people who used
+the parish to defend what they had. The Church always had reasons to
+be concerned for the protection, not only of the faith of her children,
+but also of their old Christian customs with their strong symbolic power
+to evoke occasions for the profession of faith. The Church always had
+been made into a bulwark of tradition and continuity. At the moment
+of the big migration of Catholics to this country, the Church had reason
+to be overoncerned. Poor migrants who left their country to find a
+living came into a highly competitive society, heavily influenced by the
+Calvinistic faith that the good succeed, and in the joy of its newound
+independence, somewhat set against the newcomers. They brought their
+priests with them, pastors of a migrating flock, rather than missioners
+to a civilization in need. They were more concerned to conserve the
+faith of their people than to convert a new nation. Heavy stress was laid
+on meetings among “our own,” associations which would foster marriages among Catholics, and education which would equip the child to
+remain a Catholic. The Church became a tremendous bulwark for the
+Catholic. Never before had the Church had to perform this task, or at
+least never before had it succeeded. Small numbers of missioners had
+converted whole countries. Some Catholic minorities had withstood the
+Reformation—and tiny little groups of Catholics had been able, along
+with the language of their homeland, to conserve the faith in the interior of the Balkans and the Middle East. But never before had a group
+of immigrants changed their national allegiance and remained faithful
+to the Church. And they did it through their schools and parochial societies: which willyilly constituted another chance for Catholics to feel
+themselves a minority in an alien culture. Repeated insistence that you
+can be a good American and at the same time a good Catholic only contributed toward this feeling.
+
+## The Budding Parish
+
+Catholics may belong to a minority, but the Church cannot be a minority.
+She is always the leaven: a minority lives in an enclave—the leaven penetrates. To separate the leaven from the flour means uselessness for both.
+If Catholics ever lose their concern for those who do not have God, they
+lose also their charity. Many a contemporary parish has contributed
+towards this separation by preserving an atmosphere which was once
+necessary but is no longer so.
+In the sheltered atmosphere of a Church which continues the traditions of a geographically isolated Catholic community within a
+nonatholic society, the parish has developed into a most efficient center
+for the administration of the sacraments and the imparting of religious
+instructions. In fact, never has there been a period in Church history
+that saw such a high percentage of baptized Catholics so well instructed
+and living such an intense sacramental life. Without a knowledge of the
+historical background of today’s parish it would be impossible to account
+for the one surprising shortcoming of this Church in America: the lack of
+influence of Catholics among nonatholics, or, to say it in other words,
+their lack of missionary spirit. Only by realizing that this lack is a characteristic left over from a struggle for survival do we understand that it
+is not a direct refusal of responsibility—but rather a sign of immaturity.
+A century ago, a newly arrived immigrant was often socially confined to his own national group—without denying his background, he
+could not associate with “the old American.” That was the time when the
+Church had to protect him from contact with nonatholics in fear that
+through his “otherness” he might lose his faith; and the immigrant in
+turn could not feel responsible for neighbors he did not know. Today it
+is rare for a Catholic not to be accepted because of his background. Many
+Protestants have become his neighbors, associates and friends. It is often
+under the influence of a long past competition that today the Catholic
+fails to meet the new missionary challenge.
+
+It is as if God had allowed a strong seed to mature in the earth during
+the winter and now the time has come for it to bud: wellrained Catholics
+all over this country are willing to risk responsibility for those outside
+and are waiting for specific preparation in their parish. The word “parishioner” should not refer only to the Catholic. The parish must become
+and is becoming in the consciousness of the Catholic the spiritual home
+of all who live within its boundaries—even if many do not know where
+their home is. This is happening all over. The Legion of Mary is growing;
+these are laymen who consecrate two evenings a week to the conversion
+of their neighbor. The Christian Family Movement, Cana Conferences,
+the changing of oldype Church societies, and the lifeong struggle of
+many a priest prepare the spirit into which converts, the fruit of various campaigns, can be welcomed. Even the Catholic outsider like Jose
+is meeting with a reception on which former Catholic newcomers could
+never count.
+
+Years ago the challenge of a new mass migration of Catholics would
+have been met with the establishment of national parishes. The average
+American parish had not yet started to be either American or missionary.
+Today, very slowly, the way is opening for a newcomer to be a Catholic
+in his own way without having to insist on it, without having to “protect”
+his human background in order to save his faith.
+Special Mass with Spanish Sermon?
+
+That Sunday when I met Jose and his friends at eleven o’clock on the
+Church steps I could not help asking: should we have a special Mass
+for him with a Spanish sermon? Might not such a Mass develop into
+a Jim Crow meeting? Should we introduce Spanish devotions? Special
+Spanish social groups? Should we allow his sister’s friends to wear their
+white veils or should we prudently introduce the traditional sign of the
+Children of Mary into our established congregation? Or should we hope
+that a national church be established for him in our neighborhood with
+the danger that his children will reject their faith with their inevitable
+rejection of Spanish culture?
+
+## Understanding and the Future
+
+These questions about Jose, and many more about others who do not
+find in our parishes what they seek, must be answered with some background of history and theology, and with a prudence which judges the
+unique living situation. These questions must be asked courageously
+and answered always anew. Criticism of the parish will thus become an
+examination of conscience for everybody who engages in it: layman,
+priest and outsider alike. And if it is not criticism of the clergy or the laity,
+but of the institution itself, it will mostly revolve around the idea that the
+protective parish is a thing of the past almost everywhere in this country.
+During the winter it was good that the seed remained hidden in the
+earth, but in spring, if it does not bud it rots.