path: root/contents/articles/1955-the_american_parish/en.txt

# 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.