The Independent News Source
Twitter - Facebook - Email Alerts - RSS
On the road again: New Mexico and Camden, NJ
by Tom Roberts on Aug. 18, 2009
Printer-friendly version
Send to friend
PDF version
Printer-friendly versionSend to friendPDF versionI’m winding up nearly two weeks on the road, another leg of reporting for the Emerging Church series. I visited the Archdiocese of Santa Fe and the Diocese of Las Cruces in New Mexico, as well as Camden, N.J., locations that are rarely referenced when the conversation turns to the future of the church. But maybe they should be given more serious consideration.
Among the realities shaping the church of the future are the priest shortage, the drop in the number of nuns, scarce financial resources, a dwindling church presence in the inner city, and the church’s altered status in the general culture because of the sex abuse crisis, which has diminished the credibility of church leadership. The church is also being shaped by the growth of lay ministry and the increasing presence of permanent deacons.
Originally, I intended to go to New Mexico to attend a conference on the emerging church Aug. 13-15, but the more I looked into the situation of the church in that state the more I had a hunch that New Mexico might have something to offer the larger church because of its unusual history (for starters, it did not develop from a transplanted Irish church, as occurred in much of the East). It also never had an abundance of its own priests; its parishes and missions, at great distances from any central authority (still the case today in much of the state) have a history of autonomy; the local church historically had to take responsibility for its own survival; and it was never a rich church.
Even today, the face of the church in this corner of the Southwest is humbler than that in much of the rest of the country. It never had the opportunity or wealth to heap up great monuments of granite and marble. That doesn't mean the church here lacks for moving and artful places of worship.
Much of what I found in Camden has to do with injecting the Catholic imagination, in a transformative way, into the mainstream culture. I spent much of one day with Fr. Michael Doyle at Sacred Heart Parish, a long-standing beacon of hope amid the chaos and despair of North Camden. I will be spending much of another day with the folks at Hopeworks in South Camden, a program aimed at transforming the lives of young people through a program of education and training. It was founded by Jesuit Fr. Jeff Putthoff.
I’ll be writing at greater length and detail in the coming weeks about the people who bring the church alive in these places, including a report on the conference (a collaborative effort of the Dominicans at the Aquinas Newman Center at the University of New Mexico, lay leaders and the archdiocese), and interviews with Archbishop Michael Sheehan of Santa Fe and Bishop Ricardo Ramirez of Las Cruces. I was able to sit down with Franciscan thinker and writer, Fr. Richard Rohr, for an extended interview at his Center for Action and Contemplation.
I’ll also be reporting in the weeks ahead on a sister in Albuquerque who now leads the parish she attended as a little girl; a Jesuit-inspired community organizer who’s working with a wide array of the faith community in southern New Mexico to advocate on behalf of the region’s best interests; and on lay leaders in the Diocese of Las Cruces who deal with everything from trying to make this far-flung church a more cohesive whole to the many sides of the complex immigration issue.
On another matter, I’d like to sincerely thank all of you who have sent emails with suggestions about where next I might go in this incredibly diverse church to tell more of the story. While it will be impossible to get to all of them in person (I’d need years and an enormous travel budget), I’ll certainly get to some of them and, further down the line, will try to characterize as many as I can. Keep sending along information about what you think is emerging and pointing the way to the future in your area.
If you ever make it south of
If you ever make it south of Las Cruces once more, please visit us here upon our humble border, and come with me to the Church in Mexico.
If you make it up Sante Fe way once more, please see our own and Reverend Father John Dear SJ in his hermitage rectory, or read the book!.
And while up that way please visit the wonderful Benedictine Monastery of Christ in the Desert, early praised by the Trappist Father Louis (Thomas Merton) on his way to the East by going west. It's well worth the pilgrimage, and very active with vocations from all over, and with foundations equally widespread.
Thank you very much for visiting the mighty and Reverend Father Richard Rohr.
We are very blessed by your visitation and look forward to hearing all about it.
yours
(mi choza es tu choza)
frère charles du désert OSB OBLAT (Congrégation de Subiaco)
And if you didn't this time,
And if you didn't this time, next time visit the Sanctuary of Chimayo. Catholicsim in New Mexico is all about different vegetables making a very spicey and warming soup. It's why I'm moving there.
What a great model of how the
What a great model of how the local church can and should be run: a sister who was raised in the parish is now administering it!
While there might be some danger of "inbreeding," I think local leadership that is known and trusted by the local parish is something that could keep many parishes on a more even keel than the periodic upheavals that happening once a pastor is transferred out and then (in way too many cases) a new "broom" comes in to sweep clean to fit HIS idea as to how THEIR parish should be run.
Another sign of hope in the
Another sign of hope in the Diocese of Camden is the work of the Oblates of St.Francis de Sales and DeSales Service Works. I was blessed to be a part of an intergenerational group from Holy Infant Church in Durham, NC that participated in a DeSales Service Retreat this summer. Visiting HopeWorks and learning about their good work was a highlight of this experience.
Father Michael Doyle is
Father Michael Doyle is indeed a beacon of faith in that timeworn city of Camden NJ. He just celebrated 50 years of Ordination over a celebratory Memorial Day Weekend in his Parish of Sacred Heart. He has served the poor of Camden
regardless of denomination, since 1974. Father Doyle is the posterman for what a vocation really looks like.
Fascinating series. Thank you
Fascinating series. Thank you for your obvious hard and diligent work. I have several observations.
1. Remember the Methodist itinerant preachers who went on horseback all over the western U.S. in the 18th and early 19th centuries. They pretty much made it up as they went along, bringing only the bible in their saddle bags and their saddle sores with them. Certainly this distributive model of authority enjoyed an enormous success.
2. Urban churches are great fun. I love attending mass in them. The problem is, if the gentrified young folks marry, they'll want housing for kids, and then they will have to move out. So in a way the story of an inner-city parish reviving is pretty much a function of gentrification, not a model for anything.
3. Sorry to say, but the action is in the suburban parishes. And these, in my experience, are b-o-r-i-n-g—or worse. The architecture is bland, ditto the liturgy. Dress is casual in the extreme. (Broad-bottomed ladies wearing spandex coming onto the altar before Mass to light candles, etc. A genuflection by one of these Shoney's customers is quite a sight.)
4. You missed interviewing the head of the Knights of Columbus, who is a layman with a very good feel for what's going on in the Church nationwide. (I hope your overriding ideology will still let you approach this man.) Under his leadership, the Knights are emphasizing the growing importance of devotion to Our Lady of Guadeloupe. He obviously sees a gradual amalgamation of Mexican and U.S. Catholicism, starting in the southwest but spreading from there. Interesting that the late Pope John Paul II wrote a wonderful "Prayer for the Americas" which he delivered in his visit to Mexico City at the shrine for Our Lady there. I've never heard it repeated since in any church I've attended. Just plain blindness (and their Euro orientation) on the part of the U.S. bishops.
5. I also recommend reading "The Almanac of The Dead" by Leslie Marmon Silko, a powerful novel which gives a brutally frank Native American perspective of the future from the perspective of the oldest southwestern cultures. One of the drivers for change, she notes, will be a humungous water shortage that will precipitate large-scale emigration. Golf courses in Tucson, for example, are, thankfully, completely unsustainable.
You might be interested to
You might be interested to learn that the head of the Knights is also a life long professional Republican operative. Sort of like some JPII appointed bishops.
You should see the HUGE statue of JPII outside of the new basilica in Mexico City (not the older one which President Kennedy visited; not the chapel upon Tepeyac, each of which I visited).
A further thought: too bad
A further thought: too bad Ivan Illich, Cardinal Spellman's go-to guy, is not available for an interview. He knew all this stuff decades ago.
I read that in New Mexico the
I read that in New Mexico the church "did not develop from a transplanted Irish church, as occurred in much of the East".
What do Fr Michael Doyle and Archbishop Michael Sheehan think of this?
I just loved this article!
I just loved this article!
If you ever make it to St.
If you ever make it to St. Louis, Missouri, you should visit St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church. It is a parish that was about to close, a parish that was in serious decline, and it has been restored to vibrant life again by the wisdom of His Grace, Archbishop-Emeritus Raymond Burke. His Grace chose St. Francis to be the home of the Extraordinary Rite and the Priestly Institute of Christ the King.
Just a thought.
Post new comment