At a previous post I wrote about our time at the College of St. Rose in Albany NY which recently closed. This put me in mind of our years just before that while I was teaching at a small school, Barrington College in Rhode Island. This college also has closed. Even this conjunction looks suspicious on paper, I honestly think that there was no connection between our involvement with either of these schools and their respective closures, the details and timing of which were entirely different. In our experience both were sad endings, and both reflect some of the difficulties faced by institutions of higher education these days, public or private.
Nonetheless, while at Barrington we encountered a rather “renegade” Catholic congregation called the “Genesis Community” with which we worshipped for two years. The church had been initiated by several liberal-minded Catholic Sisters and had grown into something of a phenomenon. The Priest was a progressive-minded person who was assigned by the local Bishop. The worship service was essentially directed by the choir director and several lay church members. They had put together their own hymnbook and order of worship patterns as well as having altered a good deal of the ecclesiastical language to avoid male dominated grammar, etc.
Different layfolk, both female and male, took turns planning and directing most of the worship service, and women, even non-Catholic women actually regularly participated in serving communion. The hymnbook, too, had been specially created by several female church members who saw to it that the dominant masculine language had been altered. I should mention that one of the leading forces in the creation of this congregation had become the head of the Humanities Department at the College of St. Rose where I soon was to become a faculty member as per my recent post. Actually, the Priest whom the local Bishop had assigned to the Genesis Community was nowhere near as progressive as those folks, especially the women, but he did not seem to mind the direction the community had taken.
The Church community met in the gymnasium of a local Catholic High School so the chairs and benches for seating had to be set up and taken down for each Sunday Service. The energy generated by this group of several hundred worshippers was a real joy to behold and participate in. By and large the Bishop basically tried to ignore the Genesis Community, but when its members regularly showed up as participants in local political and governmental rallies, he eventually had to move to close it down. It did function very effectively and joyously for several years prior to its closing. Mari and I consider ourselves fortunate to have been able to participate in this forward-looking church community.
Because I was a local religion professor at the nearby Barrington College I was asked if I would like to teach a Sunday morning Church School class. I thought this would be a wonderful opportunity, and it was. For a couple of semesters, I taught a course in introduction to theology on Wednesday evenings. I always had at least a dozen folks who showed up and took an active part in the discussions. A couple of the women in the class took the trouble to supply me with a new copy of the official Catholic Bible (New American) which automatically includes the Apocrypha not regularly included in protestant Bibles. I tried to base my lessons on this version Bible and found it to be extremely helpful with respect to certain theological issues. We had lively discussions, and I learned a good deal about the catholic approach to and use of the Bible.
When we moved to Albany, NY to teach at the College of St. Rose we generally attended the Sunday evening service at the Catholic church directly across the street from the college. It, too, was lively and meaningful, but nowhere as much as the Genesis Community had been. The youngish Priest was very well liked by the students, and he always spoke about key and important issues, but quite unsurprisingly it was still a very “Catholic” worship service. Moreover, it was nothing like the services we had gotten used to at the Genesis Community. These experiences left both Mari and I quite up in the air about where we belonged with respect to the whole church-going issue.
During the last twenty-five years here in Tucson we have gone from one fairly progressive Presbyterian or Methodist church to another, mostly seeking a progressive congregation that had a strong social justice emphasis. These churches have all offered some aspects of what we were looking for, but they also seemed to be caught up in their own politics or lacked a lively worship service. In short, none of our recent church experiences have carried the life and progressive spirit that we experienced at the Genesis Community. The strange combination of a progressive spirit within something of a traditional context was very special to both of us. It’s doubtful that we will find anything like it again.
I might also add that I taught part-time at Villanova University for a couple of years. That must count for something, right?
3 responses to “REFLECTING ON HAVING BEEN A PART-TIME CATHOLIC”
Hindus distinguish different sorts of spiritualities, each one suited to a particular kind of personality: intellectual (meditative), devotional, liturgical and traditional, and social service minded. When it comes to churches, it seems no one of them appeals to everyone. There is always a weight of emphasis on one of these ways. People circulate around looking for what suits them, sometimes happily finding one and sometimes not. The fact is, all of them are necessary, and it would be nice to have all of them manifested in the ministry of one church, but that would be unlikely. Besides this, we ourselves grow and change, sometimes faring best under the ministry of one kind of church and, after a period of growth, sometimes another. Social service people are generally politically liberal, seeking to redress social and systemic problems by liberating and economically elevating the marginalized. They are, thus, also quite liberal in regard to the traditions of the churches. Thus, they read in what they value in social change into the church itself, liberating people from the restrictions of worship according to a common liturgy, maintaining traditional interpretations of scripture and Christian ethics, and shaking up the generally accepted way of doing things in most churches. When criticized, they can point to happy people getting to do what other churches do not allow, soup kitchens and bread handouts, clothing distribution centers, counseling services for addicts, marital problems, etc., and a whole new approach to music in the church. Liturgy simply becomes something else.
But you can see that deep theological thinking, a desire to find ways to say corporately what we really mean by living the Christian faith, a love of the study and interpretation of scripture and tradition, and an appreciation for an important cycle of worship in the commonly received and traditional liturgy are all given short shrift by the people who measure the effectiveness of the churches’ ministry by how it works for social justice. Note I am not saying that social justice should not be the provenance of the church; I am saying that its liberal political ideas should not necessarily bleed into the church. And if we wish to be creatively engaged in changing the church, a radical and disassociated practice is not the best answer. We need to bring tradition and liturgy into an appropriated transformation that respects and gives new voice to what has been the case in the church. Understanding of scripture and theology cannot be deemed a secondary and less valuable endeavor next to social service; the latter must be an expression of the truth we assert in them. And, finally, the church must pay attention to the on-going growth of the Christian, our spiritual growth. This involves an experiential mode of Christian living that asserts the very presence of God in our lives. If we don’t have a sense of that, Christianity becomes nothing but a political and social voice. If you are still looking for the social minded folks in the Christian world, Jerry, I could recommend the United Church of Christ, Unitarians, and Quakers. They each lean very much in that direction.
I agree David that we have to have a combo of socio-political energy and meaningful liturgical practice, etc. but I do think that many (most?)get far too wrapped up in their own traditions, etc. I do not think Jesus was much interested in the latter (altho he surely was raised in it) Rather he was busy teaching a “Chrisian” ethic and healing, etc. people in need. A balance is of course needed, but in my experience most churches are too wrapped up in their game – we need to reach and help others far more than we do. Paz, Jerry
Sometimes, Progressive + Traditional → Dynamic
“[N]one of our recent church experiences have carried the life and progressive spirit that we experienced at the Genesis Community. The strange combination of a progressive spirit within something of a traditional context was very special …”
I’ve experienced such dynamism a few times, too. Not sure what went right, but might be the magic of yin + yang, cold + hot, hard + soft, old + new, existing + becoming, holding on + moving ahead, past + future…