A Real Community of Faith

The one thing people usually say about St. Mary Star of the Sea in Beverly is how beautiful the church is.  There's no denying that.  It really is a magnificent house of worship to behold but one of the biggest complaints I had about the place was how impersonal it felt to me.  “Mass is like a roomful of strangers,” I jotted down in my journal back when I was in my mid-twenties.

This wasn't to say the church lacked a faith community.  Rather, the faith community that existed at St. Mary's seemed very cliquey.  For a time, the parish published a newsletter with a section that profiled certain parishioners but my takeaway was only people who were part of the pastor's circle of friends would ever be featured.
 
I now attend a smaller church with my mother that's mostly made up of elderly parishioners.  Each week we see “the regulars” meaning certain people who almost always go to the same Mass and sit in the same pews.  At first, these worshipers were just faces in a crowd, but after a while, my mother and I would wave hello, smile or nod.  Eventually, we'd actually start talking to them.  Sometimes we'd even exchange personal details about our lives including our hardships and struggles to the point where they were no longer strangers.  For one group of regulars, getting to know them was as simple as me asking, “I see you here at Mass all the time.  What are your names?”     

A few of these regulars learned about my struggles as a single and vowed to keep me in their prayers.  When I started dating a woman from Catholic Match this year, she insisted our third date include a visit to my parish for Mass.  I cautioned her that the sight of me with a female who isn't my mother might actually give some parishioners heart attacks...or at the very least, they'd faint.  Indeed, our third date did raise a few eyebrows among the regulars.  Even my priests wanted to know who this woman was and they hoped to see her again at many more Masses.

Everyone in my life was extremely happy for me and they noticed a certain spring in my step.  Gone was the hopelessness that had plagued my life for such a long time.  Even though she wasn't my girlfriend yet, I could actually start to see myself build a future with her.

For our fourth date, I traveled over a hundred miles to visit her church and the same thing happened with her parish's regulars.  Almost immediately, we got singled out to bring the gifts up to the altar and that made this already shy woman a bit flustered.  Others wanted to know who I was and if I'd be coming back to Mass in the upcoming weeks.

 

Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be and after our fifth date, she no longer wanted to see me.  When the regulars at my church asked for their weekly update about my relationship, I had to break the bad news to them.  Two regulars who my mother and I knew for a long while now handed me a card after the following week's Mass.  Per their wishes, I opened it later on.  The card featured a cartoon lion holding an umbrella that had rain pouring out of it.  The caption read, “When life just doesn't seem to make sense...”  Inside the card the caption continued, “...trust God to carry you through the storm.”  At the bottom was a passage from Hebrews 11:1.  They signed the card with their names and added, “Your church buddies.”
 
I was greatly moved by this thoughtful gesture because it showed me that someone out there cared.  This is what a real community of faith looks like.  Simple acts like that don't contain a solution to a problem but they don't have to.  The fact that someone went out of their way to acknowledge my troubles gave me a sense of comfort.  In that moment, I definitely felt less alone and more connected to the parish.

Let this be a lesson to us all.  A church shouldn't be so big that some parishioners get lost in the crowd.  Perhaps there are people at Mass that you see all the time but you don't even know their names.  Make 2023 the year you say hi and introduce yourself...even if it's just to finally find out what their names are.  Such gestures could sow the seeds of a real community of faith.

Almost Thirty Years Later...Part 1

I'm convinced the universe plays tricks on people because the first few months of the new year brought into my life a few things from almost thirty years ago.

A blizzard was predicted for January 29th and that meant the Saturday Mass my mother and I usually attended was canceled.  It turned out to be a pretty big storm with heavy snowfall that continued into the evening.  The manager at my night shift job asked me to come into work a few hours early so that left no time to get out the snow blower.  This turned out to be a good thing because when I attempted to start the snow blower later that morning, the motor wouldn't crank over and it took some doing to get it running again.  By the time I cleared out the sidewalks and driveways of our house and an invalid neighbor's house, the only nearby option for Mass was to visit a church I swore I'd never set foot in again...my childhood parish of St. John the Evangelist in Beverly.

I had grown to dislike St. John's during my high school years for various reasons.  The dynamic priests who had once run the church had all been replaced by boring old priests who gave terrible sermons.  After the passing of the much-loved Fr. Everard, the parish saw two pastors who kept asking for more money but didn't do nearly as much to make the church a welcoming community. Those increased donations were used to renovate the church's interior but the end result was incredibly ugly and later covered over with another renovation.

During my awkward high school years, I really could have used ministries and mentors geared toward teens but the parish was on spiritual cruise control.  They did absolutely nothing for young people which is too bad because I was passionate about my faith but was starting to question it.  I also noticed that there were very few females my own age who went to Mass.
       
What this parish did have was plenty of old people...and a good number of them were hypocritical because they liked to get dressed up for Mass but they really didn't do much to increase the faith once they stepped outside the church.  When I was an altar boy, one of my priests told me there were a group of old ladies sitting up front who always came to him after Mass to complain if we made mistakes.  Trying to do your best when you're young is tough enough but now I had to impress the “Russian judges” in the first row.
 
As I entered college, my family decided to switch to St. Mary Star of the Sea in downtown Beverly but every once in a great while I'd hear stories about my former parish that made me glad we left.  One St. John's priest named Fr. Mullen put his foot in his mouth when he gave a Memorial Day sermon that criticized the glorification of war with such things as parades.  A World War II veteran sitting in the front row was so angry, he yelled out something along the lines of: “If it wasn't for us veterans, you wouldn't be free!”

St. John's was also the parish of Mayor Bill Scanlon who I felt was an arrogant bully.  During one election in which he was expected to win by an overwhelming majority, his campaign decided to sling the mud anyway by leaking to the local newspaper his opponent's sealed juvenile record from high school.  His supporters justified these underhanded tactics and since the mayor had once played hockey in his youth, they would quip, “He's not trying to win the Lady Byng Trophy.”  Yet Mr. Scanlon's campaign often touted the fact that he was a long time parishioner of St. John's.  Years later, the mayor was seen helping to cut the ribbon of a new abortion clinic shortly after being named Catholic of the Year by St. Mary's School.  Hypocritical indeed!

For one particular lent, my mother decided to attend Mass everyday and sometimes that meant she had to visit St. John's.  I would drop her off and then pick her up later but I refused to enter the church.  Unfortunately, the Beverly Catholic Collaborative Plan made it more difficult to avoid this place and one of our pastors got the bright idea to discontinue the 5 PM Mass at St. Mary's during the summer months and shift it over to St. John's because that building had air conditioning.  My mother and I decided to go to Mass elsewhere for the season.

Now almost thirty years later, I pulled into the plowed parking lot of St. John's to attend noon Mass with my mother.  The new front doors of the church were more ornate than the ones from my childhood.  Only three or four old people were inside at first.  With surgical mask and sunglasses still on, I looked around at all the changes to the interior.  Almost everything was a little fancier even if it didn't need to be.  For some reason, a purple accent stripe was painted two thirds of the way up the right wall.  The pews were now angled instead of straight.

My eyes may have been looking at St. John's as it was now, but my mind kept switching back to how the place looked before and just after that disastrous renovation.  I could see an usher in a red blazer walking up the aisle with a special crank handle in his hand that was used to open the long side windows.  Today these windows are sealed because of the air conditioning and they have added gothic details too.  I could see the awful gold crosshatching and burning bush flames that had once adorned the sanctuary and wondered of the old paint was still under there.  I saw the church's original altar rails and purple curtains.  Off to the left were the father and daughter singing team and to the right was Fr. Kiley playing the organ.  One of the only things that remained untouched were the church's hanging lights.

More people trickled into church including an portly gentleman I had sometimes seen at the Carmelite Chapel, two girls in their 20s, an older woman and her daughter, and a family of high schoolers but the vast majority of parishioners were elderly and that made me wonder about this place's future.  At one time, the bulletin for the Beverly Catholic Collaborative published each church's weekly need vs. what they received in donations and all three parishes regularly fell short.  I glanced at the latest bulletin and noticed they stopped publishing the weekly need but collections at St. John's were still fairly skimpy.

 

I didn't recognize the priest celebrating Mass because we had been away for so long.  His sermon on the lives of the saints was okay and at one point he said, “What we want might not be what God wants.”  As a single Catholic, it was a line I heard often and it really bothered me because I just didn't know what God wanted anymore.  At first, I wasn't going to put any money in the collection basket but then at the last minute, I changed my mind.

After Mass, we returned to the parking lot and one by one the handful of cars started to pull away.  I could still see the throngs of well-dressed parishioners from long ago.  During my childhood, the noon Mass was usually followed by a trip to Dunkin' Donuts for some Munchkins and perhaps The Three Stooges on TV.  For this trip, my mother and I decided to get something to eat at a restaurant and when we got home, I cleared some more snow with the snow blower.  I had been up for 24 hours by the time I got to bed.  Another shift at work awaited and busy days like this left little time to have a life.

Renovation Ruination

I think it's safe to say that Vatican II probably tried to accomplish too much too soon and while some of the changes it brought about were minor, others must have been extremely jarring for longtime parishioners,  Nowhere is this more true than in the arena of church renovations.
 
Although the Second Vatican Council never issued a single document or dictate that made architectural changes to churches compulsory, that didn't stop zealous pastors from getting carried away with their efforts to bring the Mass closer to the people.  All over the country, drastic renovations were initiated that seemed more like “wreckovations” to parishioners who loved their ornately decorated houses of worship.  High altars, elevated pulpits, reredos, side chapels and part or all of the altar rails were removed.  Statues and frescoes were whitewashed.  Some churches even saw stained glass windows covered over because they were thought to be a distraction.  These changes must have been almost universal because during my lifetime, I've only been to a couple of churches that still used an intact altar rail during the distribution of communion.  Things were getting so out of hand, the Vatican published Opera Artisis in 1971 which called for restraint in dealing with the artwork that adorned churches.  The National Conference of Catholic Bishops appeared to counter these recommendations with a 1978 booklet entitled Environment and Art in Catholic Worship and this only seemed to quicken the pace of these heavy-handed renovations.

A friend's mother mentioned the hurt feelings that were caused when most of her church's marble altar rail was removed because working class immigrants had scraped up whatever money they could to fund its installation.  My mother's childhood parish of the Immaculate Conception of Salem, MA  saw colorful statues painted white and many ornamental details lost.  Both she and my uncle have a bit of sadness in their voices whenever they talk about these changes.  “It's so different now.  It looks nothing like it did when I was a kid,” she laments.
 
While changes to St. Mary Star of the Sea in Beverly were minor by comparison, a couple of prominent statues did not escape the whitewash treatment.  During the 1990s, our pastor was Fr. Charles Hughes and he brought these sculptures back to their original colorful luster.  When a parishioner offered to pay for gold leaf to be added to St. Anthony's rosary, Fr. Hughes insisted it wasn't necessary because a good Franciscan would have carried a wooden rosary.  Today some parishes have instituted “re-renovations” in order to undo many post-Vatican II changes.  It's enough to make you wonder what it was all for in the first place?

Playing musical chairs with a church's decor does very little to get people to go to Mass but in times of uncertainty, undertaking such a renovation provides the illusion that something very tangible and achievable is happening.  The 1960s saw tremendous societal upheaval but instead of confronting the evil of these times, Vatican II's poorly-timed renovations were a distraction that caused many parishes to focus on inward things that really didn't matter all that much.

Unfortunately, the trend of unnecessary renovations didn't begin with Vatican II.  Seeing historical photos of the lower church at St. Mary's in Beverly reveals a very beautiful altar that seemed more than adequate.  It was replaced with a new altar of a much simpler design because Fr. Francis Shields found it necessary to have the lower church completely gutted shortly after his instillation as pastor in 1958.

During the post-World War II years, modern design took hold in America and anything old and ornate was often seen as being obsolete and disposable.  When the Great Salem Fire destroyed St. Joseph's Church, its 1949 replacement was constructed with International Style architecture.  While some grew to cherish this plain-looking building, others thought it was ugly.  When the Archdiocese of Boston wanted to demolish this house of worship many years later, its modern design was occasionally cited as a reason for not saving the building.    

Long after Vatican II, many pastors still can't resist “sprucing up” what they feel are tired-looking churches and I've seen some pretty frivolous and downright baffling renovations over the years.  If you look at exterior of St. Paul's Church in Hamilton, everything seems normal.  Upon entering the building, you notice something isn't quite right.  In 2003, someone got the bright idea to place the altar up against the left wall.  Pews in a semitransept off to the right now have a nice view of the Mass.  Unfortunately, worshipers in the main church don't despite an attempt to angle those pews so that they are more in line with the sanctuary.  I sometimes call St. Paul's the sideways parish.
 
The Carmelite Chapel at the Northshore Mall once featured partitions that slid along tracks in the ceiling but they had long been disused.  A tasteful but very minimal renovation saw the instillation of new ceiling panels without tracks and a pink curtain behind the altar to replace an unattractive green one.  Other than that, the chapel still retained much of its original look.  In 2010, a more extensive renovation took place which saw an entire section of pews removed so the altar could be extended farther out.  The pink curtain was removed and replaced with a wood facade that held two artificially lit stained glass windows from the closed Our Lady of the Assumption Church in Chelsea.  To top it all off, large rectangles of soundproofing hung from the ceiling from chains.  Removing seats is one way to make a house of worship seem more crowded but during the reduced capacity of the Covid-19 lock down, I bet our priests wished they had those extra pews.
 
I thought St. Mary of the Annunciation of Danvers was a nice-looking church yet when Fr. Michael Doyle was installed as pastor, talk of making the parish more “liturgically appropriate” began.  Controversy erupted when plans were made to demolish a neighboring funeral home for extra parking.  When all was said and done, the historic house was gone and the church's interior was completely done over but the renovations seemed gaudy to me.  Instead of adopting a less-is-more approach, the parish went overboard trying to make everything so fancy.  Not long afterwards, Fr. Doyle complained in the church bulletin of dwindling collections and the need for parishioners to give more.
 
The interior of St. Mary Star of the Sea in Beverly was already beautiful but in the early 2000s, our pastor decided to have it fully repainted.  The parish had just paid off a considerable amount of debt thanks to a one-time land deal with a real estate developer.  Talk of boiler repairs, snow removal costs, the possible installation of a sprinkler system and about a hundred other expenses made me wonder if it was really a good time to spend money on such a superficial thing?  After a change in leadership a few years later, our collections no longer met the parish's weekly needs.

And this highlights a very good point.  Priests who place a great deal of importance on exterior changes need to realize they get very little bang for their buck when it comes to improving the spiritual health of their parishes.  In this blog's second entry, I described the disastrous renovation of St. John the Evangelist in Beverly.  Despite “improvements” that were at times painful to look at, my mother, brother and I continued to attend Mass there.  It wasn't the horrible decor that drove us away from the parish.  Rather, it was the realization that our souls were no longer being fed.  Sadly, this is why we left St. Mary's too.  Perhaps pastors need to do a better job building loving and caring communities within the walls of their churches rather than wasting so much time debating what color paint those walls should have.

Blogging's Broken Record

If you search many of the blogs and articles about single Catholics you'll probably encounter comments from a reader named Larry Bud who sometimes goes by Uncle Fester.  After reading a piece from U.S. Catholic entitled Flying solo: Life as a single Catholic, I decided to post a link to Long Lost Black Sheep just to let people know they weren't alone.  From there, Larry Bud found my blog and decided to comment on a semi-regular basis.  While I welcomed the discussion, he seemed very abrasive.  After checking out his comments on other sites, some readers came to this conclusion too.  It wasn't so much what Larry Bud said but how he said it and if his remarks rubbed people the wrong way, he felt it was their problem.  When challenged, he tended to cut the debate short by bowing out of the discussion.  We had gone back and forth several times until he decided to stop commenting on my blog altogether.

Larry Bud once suggested I read his comments from other blogs so he wouldn't have to repeat himself.  What I found was one theory repeated over and over again like a broken record.  According to him, the Catholic Church was in decline because parishes no longer served as social networks where parishioners felt they were part of a community.  He said mixers, dances, carnivals and other gatherings gave singles an opportunity to meet each other without the pressure of a narrowly-focused singles ministry that was doomed to fail.  He also stated your parents and grandparents likely met each other at these parish-wide gatherings which according to him, fell out of favor sometime in the 1980s.  Perhaps there is some truth to Larry Bud's hypothesis but an experience at my former parish last month leads me to believe there's more to it than that.

St. Mary Star of the Sea in Beverly hosted a free “jazz brunch” after the 10:45 AM Mass and when I told a friend about it, he wanted to go.  Apparently it was something of a Mardi Gras celebration.  At best, the gathering would feature breakfast foods like pancakes and eggs along with actual jazz musicians.  At worst, there would be coffee and donuts with the “jazz” performed by old white guys from the parish.

We arrived at the church's function hall early so Mass was still going on upstairs.  A few volunteers were setting up the food which consisted of mini subs, cookies and pastries.  I think they forgot the “b” in brunch stood for breakfast.  On the tables were Mardi Gras beads and in one corner were items for a silent auction.  People started to trickle in after Mass but only a small percentage of the congregation actually attended.  My friend and I sat at a smaller table by ourselves but almost immediately, an elderly lady sat right next to us.  She chatted up a storm and occasionally gave me pats on the arm and shoulder.  Argh!  The “jazz” band were indeed old white guys from the parish who played dixieland.

Almost all of the attendees were elderly or families.  When a handful of people my age arrived, they sat by themselves and left after about twenty minutes.  One woman from this group used to run our parish's young adult ministry several years ago and was fully aware of my struggles as a Catholic single.  Not once did she say hi or introduce me to her friends.  Am I really that invisible?  In fact, no one from St. Mary's wondered why my mother and I had stopped attending Mass here.  Therein lies the flaw in Larry Bud's theory.  Parish-wide events don't automatically create social networks or a sense of community.  St. Mary's has had many all-inclusive gatherings over the years but when singles like me attend, we still feel disconnected because we just can't find what we're looking for.

Larry Bud is vehemently against singles ministries and matchmaking events because he feels they don't work.  I think the reason they come up short is the same reason why all-inclusive parish gatherings seem so lame nowadays.  There just aren't enough singles or younger people attending Mass in the first place.  Society has become more skeptical and spiritually lazy so churches cannot count on a large number of worshipers to be active in parish life anymore.  This could explain why those all-inclusive gatherings have dropped off in the past few decades.  (Perhaps the same handful of volunteers who set up these events get tired of having to do all the work.)

There's nothing inherently wrong with ministries that target certain segments of the population.  An elderly widow will have very different spiritual needs than a young couple starting a family.  Several years ago, the Archdiocese of Boston held a regional gathering for young adults that attracted singles from many different parishes.  Had the event featured something more than prayers and lectures, I think it could have done wonders to bring those seeking marriage together.

If you can't find your fellow Catholic singles at Mass, chances are you won't be able to find them at a hokey parish function inundated with kids and the elderly.  My mother had to look beyond her church to find a spouse because she just wasn't compatible with any of the Catholic men in the neighborhood.  This is what can happen when we limit the dating pool to the local level.  My hometown is filled with far too many small-minded people so even if parish activities at St. Mary's were well-attended by every age group, it's doubtful there would be anyone there for me.

Where Is Christmas?

As a kid, Christmas was such a magical time.  My married friends tell me some of that magic gets rekindled each year as they watch their own children open presents on Christmas morning.  Being single during the holidays usually brings feelings of isolation that I just can't shake.

When I first attended St. Mary's in Beverly with my mother and brother, Christmas Masses seemed special because the church was still very new to us but as the years passed, I started to feel out of place.  Seeing the pews filled with so many old people and families certainly didn't help.  When my brother moved away, it was just my mother and me.  Sometimes it was just me.

At one point, our pastor decided to reintroduce midnight Mass after a long absence from the schedule.  I wanted to see if it would attract a younger crowd but since my mother didn't want to stay up late, I had to go by myself.  Sitting alone in a pew didn't exactly fill me with the Christmas spirit.  That first midnight Mass was well-attended and over the years, its popularity only increased.  Soon I found myself surrounded by old people and families again.

The music during Christmas Mass featured a choir of senior citizens, organ and trumpet but someone got the bright idea to add a kettle drum into the mix.  When it first thundered, we all flinched out of fear.  Every year since, it's taken unsuspecting once-a-year Catholics by surprise.  Our pastor said this music was so beautiful, it was probably what heaven sounded like.  I found it to be more annoying than heaven-like.  Having senior citizens belt out the line “Glory to God” over and over again just wasn't my cup of tea but at St. Mary's, people tended to see things one way.  

Our pastor decided to replace the church’s perfectly adequate nativity scene with a much more expensive, hand-crafted one from Italy.  A lot of money was raised to acquire these figurines but they did nothing to increase my faith.  While looking them over, I wondered why on one of the holiest days of the year, my faith felt so weak.

Despite all the decorations, music and well-meaning sermons, I wasn't getting much out of Christmas Mass anymore but it was far better for some at my church to ignore people like me because our very existence invalidated their rosy view of the parish's sense of community.  No room at the inn for lost sheep.

I still go to church hoping the Holy Spirit will set my soul on fire somehow but for the past few years, Christmas seems like just another day.  Before the start of this year's Christmas Mass at my current parish, I spotted a man in the hallway holding a shepherd’s crook.  Apparently, our priests asked two people to dress up as Mary and Joseph with the woman holding a real baby.  During Mass, the little one started to cry so Mary and Joseph had to slink back into the hallway.  I give these priests an A for effort but such a display did little to inspire me.

At least it wasn't as tacky as a zip line Jesus.  A former pastor once told the congregation how one church had set up a wire that went from the choir loft all the way down to the crèche that was placed just in front of the altar.  During Christmas Mass, they would send the baby Jesus speeding down the wire to his manger.  Gimmicks like this seem more like comedy relief than spiritual inspiration.

When I look at the Christmas tree in the house, I think of how much coming down those stairs with my brother to open presents meant to me.  This year, my brother called at 1 PM on Christmas Day to invite us to his house for a Christmas meal.  My mother and I were nothing more than an afterthought to him and I suspect the phone call was just a courtesy.  Given the long and messy drive up to his place, there was no way we could have made it.

My mother and I settled down for a quite dinner by ourselves but I was plagued by a tinge of sadness.  Something wonderful has been lost and I find myself asking more than ever, “Where is Christmas?”

More Of The Same

Bishop Mark O'Connell had recommended I check out a weekly summer reading group at his parish because there were a few 40 year olds who regularly attended.  The meetings targeted millennials but everyone was welcome.  Participants read and discussed chapters from the book What Catholics Really Believe by Karl Keating.  I decided to take him up on the offer but doubts lingered in the back of my mind.

A sign inside the lobby of St. Theresa's said "Calling All Millennials" and directed me to a small conference room.  Sitting at the table were an elderly couple, a guy in his 60s and the instructor who was also older.  A married woman in her 30s arrived a little later.  Everyone was friendly and we had a nice discussion while reading about purgatory but the group wasn't exactly what I was looking for.  The instructor did say two women in their 40s usually joined them but both were married.  Just my luck!  I sent the bishop an e-mail a few days later to let him know I probably wouldn't be attending any more of these meetings.

The visit had me thinking about an experience at my former parish, St. Mary Star of the Sea in Beverly.  A few years ago, I asked Deacon Joens why our church didn't have anything geared towards older singles.  Even though the young adult group's age limit was 35, he suggested I attend saying, "No one is checking IDs at the door."  Except for the instructor, everyone there was much younger and I felt very awkward.  The deacon dropped by for a few minutes to say hi but as the months passed, he never bothered to follow up with me.  Eventually, the group was quietly disbanded due to a lack of young adults.  Did anyone care I had nowhere to go in my own church?  Apparently not because as the months passed, the parish website continued to promote the young adult group as an active ministry.

It's very easy for people to give Catholic singles "helpful" advice when they have nothing at stake.  In my e-mail to Bishop O'Connell, I said people like me just aren't a priority.  To help him understand what many Catholic singes had to endure, I added two links:

One was for the blog The Hidden Faithful:
https://thehiddenfaithful.wordpress.com/

The other was to an article entitled How Churches Today Abandon Christian Singles:
http://geeksjourney.com/how-churches-today-abandoned-the-christian-single

I told the bishop to pay particular attention to the comments section on each site but he never sent a response.  Why am I not surprised?  While many within the Church joyfully promote vocations to the priesthood and religious life, no one seems to lose any sleep thinking about how lonely Catholic singles are.  Just kick the can down the road as months, years and even decades pass by.

A while ago, someone told me the young adult group at St. Mary's was back and they extended the age range to include people in their 40s.  Their Facebook page had photos of many young people enjoying themselves at a pub but an event page showed some incredibly low numbers so I contacted the woman who ran the ministry to learn more.  She admitted they were struggling as a group with attendance as high as 15 but usually hovering around 5.  The number of single, married, dating, men and women were evenly split.  Ages ranged from college students to people in their 30s with most of the over 40 crowd bowing out after having been members for awhile.  Perhaps they felt out of place?

She said St. Mary's also had a men's prayer group, mixed bible study and daily Eucharistic adoration.  I wondered to myself how any of these ministries would help me as a Catholic single.  She even suggested I try to find a Theology on Tap group.  Bishop O'Connell had recommended this too saying there was a Theology on Tap in Ayer, MA with a nice middle aged crowd.  I e-mailed the woman who ran that group and explained my situation.  She replied, "I don't think we fully meet what you are looking for, but it is the same reason we continue to have a strong TOT group 8 years later.  We weigh more toward the older and married side of things."  Ayer is a long drive for a gathering that probably wouldn't meet my expectations.

I don't think the Catholic Church knows what to do with older singles like me which is a shame because we need our religion to be there for us.  Rejecting the hookup culture of secular society makes finding a spouse incredibly difficult.  Being shuffled around to different ministries that don't quite address our concerns is not the answer.

Easy For Them To Say

This fall, I attended a church function that attracted several priests as well as the new vicar for the north region of Massachusetts.  Most of the guests had not arrived yet but a priest I never met before started chatting with me.  His name was Fr. John MacInnis, pastor of Saint John the Baptist Church in Peabody, MA.  He told me a little about his parish then I decided to ask if his church had many young people.  (How could I have this blog and not ask that!)  He said there weren't many but his parish was starting to reach out to some of the young families who came to Mass.  I asked, “What about the young adults like me who are still single?”  Fr. John didn't have much of an answer for me.  I mentioned how the last couple of parishes that I belonged to didn't have anything for single young adults either adding, “I'm not even a young adult anymore.  I'm 43.”  He said 40 was still young and then assured me there was still time to have a family.  I didn't share that optimistic outlook and his comment reminded me of a conversation with another priest that took place a few years ago.

St. Mary Star of the Sea in Beverly, MA entered into the Boston Archdiocese's collaborative plan in June of 2013 and our new pastor at the time, Fr. Mark Mahoney held a “town meeting” with parishioners a few months later.  I approached him after the gathering to discuss my concerns about the plight of young adult singles.  I mentioned my calling to be married and never having the desire to be a priest.  I asked why no one at Mass ever openly prayed for single Catholics and then let him know that at 40 years of age, I felt the time to have a family was quickly slipping away.

Fr. Mark started off by saying he felt the sacrament of marriage was just as important as the priesthood because the bride and groom sacrificed for each other in a way that was very Christ-like.  He explained the Archdiocese instructed parishes to pray for priestly vocations at Mass.  Then he tried to reassure me by saying people were getting married much later these days so being single in your 40s isn't out of the ordinary now.  Fr. Mark suggested St. Mary's could initiate a day of service for the young adults of the parish but as the months passed, nothing ever came of it.

What struck me about both conversations was the lack of urgency.  I was basically told not to worry because 40 is the new 20.  It was painfully obvious these priests could understand what single Catholics had to endure on an intellectual level but they didn't seem to fully appreciate the real weight of our struggles.  40 is 40.

Had I fallen in love, married and raised a family even ten years ago, think of all the memories and experiences I'd have.  Instead there's a decade filled with loneliness, isolation and anxiety.  My dad passed away in 2012 and never lived to see any grandchildren from me and that hurts.  With ten years behind me, I am no closer to being married and now I wonder if my mother will be around to see my grandchildren.  Having a family later in life means higher health risks and lower energy levels.  Do priests think about these things when they so easily dispense such glib advice?

If you check out some of the various Catholic dating websites and chat rooms, you'll see a lot of desperation out there.  So many singles feel the clock is running out on their dreams of falling in love, getting married and having kids...and for many women, it's a biological clock.  Some may ask why the Church should be responsible for getting us a date.  Well, in many ways it's because of the Church that we don't have dates.

People like me are causalities of the culture war but many priests don't even want to admit we exist let alone help us.  Society has become more liberal and secular over the last few decades and when you embrace Catholic values, it seriously limits the dating pool.  If the goal of New Evangelization is to renew our congregations and place more butts in the pews, then priests should make helping Catholic singles a top priority instead of brushing our heartfelt concerns aside.

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?