Now This Is A Church

Saint Mary Star of the Sea in Beverly, MA

The thought of leaving the only parish you've ever know can be unthinkable for some Catholics.  In fact, the sudden closure of several churches within the Boston Archdiocese several years ago caused much discord and upheaval.  If your spiritual needs are not being met, however, changing parishes can be quite easy.  During my childhood at St. John the Evangelist in Beverly, I just assumed our great priests would always be around but by my early teens, they were no longer there due to a series of transfers and the death of our pastor.  At a time when I was seeking closeness with my faith, the new priests assigned to our parish seemed distant and cold.  Their sermons just didn't do it for my family and soon my older brother and I were making up nicknames for them like Fr. Forgetful and Fr. Boring.  With the departure of our interim pastor, we were assigned Fr. George Butera.  He seemed friendly enough but was a bit quirky and after a while my mother came to the realization that he was always asking his parishioners for money.  This was a real sore spot for us because the church's interior had already undergone a recent and unnecessary renovation.

After sticking it out for a few years, my mother wanted something more so on a random Sunday in late 1992, she decided we would give Saint Mary Star of the Sea in downtown Beverly a try.  It was a large traditional looking church (circa 1908) made out of red brick with a steeple that could be seen for miles.  My first time inside had actually taken place many years before when my mother introduced my brother and me to the Holy Thursday tradition of visiting seven different churches in one evening.  When we entered St. Mary's again and took our place amongst the parishioners, the only thing I had remembered about the building from that initial visit was the high ceiling covered in ornate woodwork.  My brother admired the architecture and remarked, "Now this is a church."  I was struck by the large and diverse congregation which seemed to include a good amount of young people.  I guess we get so attached to our parishes, it almost felt like I was a spy trying to blend in with the crowd or at the very least, a stranger who had been invited to a friend of a friend's party.  The teen girl who sang during the Mass was very talented and my brother thought she was cute too.  The priest, who was nearing the end of his assignment here, gave a very upbeat sermon which only added to the positive energy we found at St. Mary Star of the Sea.

After Mass, we decided right then and there to make this church our new spiritual home.  The beautiful architecture was a plus and despite my brother's remark, it was a combination of many things that drew us to this place.  You just got a sense that the congregation was dedicated in its faith and had worked hard to build a wonderful community that was a reflection of God's love.  As my mother, brother and I returned week after week, we didn't feel like strangers anymore.  The pastor at the time was Fr. Richard Johnson.  He seemed to be a likable grandfatherly figure with a positive attitude that often shone through in his sermons.  There was also Fr. Richard Mehm who was extremely conservative in his beliefs and took his faith very seriously.  You could always count on his sermons to tackle the hot button issues head on without apology.  New to St. Mary's in 1990 was the fairly young and somewhat jocular Fr. Richard Beaulieu who had belonged to this parish as a child.  He was more liberal in his outlook and wasn't afraid to call out the hypocrisy of conservatives which of course upset some parishioners.  I wondered if he and Fr. Mehm often butted heads behind closed rectory doors.  This was all so very refreshing to me because at the very least, these priests had something to say and their sermons usually gave you something to think about which had not been the case with the church we left behind.

A regular sight at one of the morning Masses was a little boy who liked to shake hands so much, he left his pew and went up and down the isles in order to reach as many people as possible.  I marveled at that kind of innocence and it reminded me of how I saw the world during my early childhood at St. John's.  How cynical it was for me to wonder when he would stop doing that.

My initial experiences with St. Mary Star of the Sea were uplifting but I wanted so much more from my faith and this church.  Doubt and awkwardness had punctuated my high school years.  Would this house of worship provide a nurturing environment to help me find my place in the world?

Something More Than Coffee And Donuts

It's amazing how drastically your view of something can change over the years.  Looking back to when I was a small child, I loved the elderly parishioners at St. John the Evangelist.  It didn't matter how wrinkled or gray they were.  I thought these people had a grandfatherly or grandmotherly aura about them and some even radiated a form of charisma that children were inexplicably drawn to.  One elderly usher liked wearing turtlenecks and tinted glasses with the church's standard issue red blazer and I thought he was just plain cool.  When it came time for everyone to shake hands, I tired to reach as many people as I could and loved it.  Young, old, male or female.  It didn't matter.  I really wanted to shake your hand.

As I got a bit older, this innocence waned.  I think young people bring to the table a passion that's genuine and pure but often it lacks a certain amount of tact that comes with age.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing, though.  During one altar boy training session, Fr. Kiley urged us to do our best because if we made the slightest mistake in our duties, he would hear about it at the end of Mass.  You see, there was a group of old ladies sitting in the front pews who critiqued our performance on the altar.  My immediately reaction was to ask Father why these parishioners were paying all this attention to us and not the Mass itself.  I saw a distasteful complacency in the front pew peanut gallery and wasn't afraid to say so.  Now my remark could have been put more diplomatically but at its heart was a concern some parishioners were missing the true meaning of the Mass.

When you think about the early years of St. John the Evangelist in the 1950s, it had to be about passion.  This group of people decided to be part of a new parish in a city that was already home to two Catholic churches.  For over a year, they met in the basement of a veterans post to worship but eventually this new parish built what was then a very modern complex that not only housed a church but a school and convent as well.  I'm guessing these people had to strongly believe in what they were doing and put their money, time and energy where their mouths were all in an effort to spread the Gospel, educate young minds and form a community of faith.

In the 1950s there seemed to be a spiritual confidence within the Church where bold and creative ideas emerged for propagating the faith like the establishment of chapels inside shopping malls in order to reach people in their new marketplaces.  During my time at St. John's some thirty years later, I just didn't see much of this remarkable passion.  As I was struggling with my faith, the old people around me seemed to be content, static and stale.  For many, going to church was simply part of a long-held Sunday morning routine where pews were "reserved" and a mere dollar in the collection plate was good enough even for the parishioners who could afford much more.  After Mass activities included gossiping over coffee and donuts but never trying to carry one's faith beyond the church doors.  These are not the things that build great parishes but many at St. John's were blind to just how stagnant the congregation was.  They were certainly blind to the struggles my friends and I faced as young Catholics.  A good number of my public school classmates attended CCD with me but very few of them actually went to Mass.  That number shrank even more after confirmation with some of my friends giving up on God altogether.  Had this parish offered us something more than coffee and donuts after Mass then perhaps this wouldn't have been the case.

I started to look around the church and wonder where all the young people were.  This question took on new meaning as I found myself developing attractions to the opposite sex with almost no girls my own age in sight.  A feeling of loneliness eventually crept in and I grew to resent the large elderly presence at St. John's because in many ways it represented a failure of my parish to stay relevant.  On a personal level, I so badly wanted to find fellowship and love with people my own age, seeing all the gray hair and wrinkled skin in the pews became tiresome.  Hearing the elderly constantly complain about death or aches and pains was downright depressing to this teenager but few things were worse than when an old lady would tell me how handsome I looked!  (Oh how I longed to hear that kind of compliment from a girl my own age.)

Sadly, much of my life in the Catholic Church has been marred by priests and laypeople who have never treated my concerns with a sense of urgency yet if parishes are to thrive, there needs to be a balance that encourages the best traits of ALL its parishioners.  While youth often brings recklessness and self-absorption, it also offers creativity and passion and these gifts can be the perfect compliment to the wisdom and patience that comes with age.  Without a serious commitment to its young adults, congregations stagnate in a climate of indifference and narrow-mindedness until they wither away.