Pearl Clutching Parishioners

 

We’ve wound up at a downtown parish in a not so nice city. 

When I was in college in Pittsburgh I lived half a block from an Oratory with perpetual adoration, daily confessions, and multiple daily Masses. The cathedral a block away from there had the same, minus adoration.

The local cathedral has one daily Mass three days a week. Confession once a week. And shares its two priests, one of whom is himself shared with a religious order, with two other downtown churches (including my own). Its total weekly collection is roughly $1,400.

Why? Because it’s in an impoverished neighborhood with elevated crime. 80 years ago my great great grandfather would take a streetcar there from several miles north to go to a well attended Mass. Now the only ones left are mostly older folks who have resisted the urge to go suburbia for Sunday Mass and who flock to any young family who happens to show up.

The third church in our parish has 20 people show up to its lone Sunday Mass on a good day and its location makes the hair on most peoples’ spines stand up.

Which begs the question; why haven’t we done anything about this? The Beatitudes, the Last Judgment, the parable of the old widow, the testimony of the early Christians in the Book of Acts, solid Catholic social teaching from Leo XIII (Rerum Novarum) and Pius XI (Quadragesimo Anno), and further writings from Chesterton, Day, and Belloc are evidently not enough to soften the hearts of stone of us pearl clutching parishioners.

Clearly these parishes are in these neighborhoods, in their modern state, for a reason. Yet the general attitude among many parishioners is that they will not deign to interact with the neighborhood surrounding their own parish. 

There certainly are safety considerations and one has to keep one’s eyes open. Yet the priests and remaining parishioners are downtown regularly, often after dark, and I have heard of not one incident of violent crime or theft. 

To be honest it is mostly entitled, bourgeois arrogance. We are not willing to risk even the slightest setback to our wealthy, convenient lifestyle. We seem not to remember that people LIVE in these neighborhoods that we will not touch with the tips of our fingers. Why are we entitled to better things than the locals?

There are a few inspirational exceptions. At a synod meeting yesterday a woman from the cathedral and a man from the danger zone church both mentioned how they continue to live in down neighborhoods despite the hardship and risk. During a poignant moment, the woman ask a fellow cathedral parishioner: “Will you trade Heaven for Hell? Will you give up suburbia to become my neighbor?”

I am not a good example and do not claim to have the answers. Yet it seems obvious that our role is to help restore these neighborhoods which conservatives have left to rot and which liberals have cynically pumped for votes to shore up their power base. 

In this I think the distributist movement linked with more classical education is likely the soundest approach. But before we march in there with our 12 step programs we have to be there. If the only ones there are the political grifters and social engineers, we shouldn’t be surprised that what we get from our cities is endless dysfunction and creeping socialism.