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  The dynamic priests who had once run the church had all been replaced by boring old priests who gave terrible sermons.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.

The National Tragedy...That's Largely Forgotten

It was supposed to be just another ordinary Wednesday in 1995.  At the time, I was attending Emerson College and don't remember much about the first half of my day.  I probably took an early-morning commuter rail train into Boston because a look at my photography log book reveals that I went to Reservoir Station on the MBTA's Green Line to photograph two of the transit authority's old snow plow trolleys.  Then I helped a cute French girl at Copley Station find her way to the Museum of Fine Arts.  After class, I took an afternoon commuter rail train back home but since there were no smart phones in 1995, riders were blissfully unaware of the national tragedy that had occurred several hours earlier.  My dad, who was waiting to pick me up at the train station said, “They blew up a building.”
 
I found his statement puzzling.  They?  Who were they?  And what building?  In that moment, I couldn't fathom the level of destruction that would soon flash before my eyes during the television news coverage of the Oklahoma City Bombing.  In those days, the term BREAKING NEWS was not used so lightly.

Few people outside of Oklahoma City had ever heard of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building but now the ruins of this 9-story structure was burned into our minds.  At least 168 people were dead including three pregnant women and 19 children.  15 of those young victims had died in the building's day care center.  Almost 700 others were injured.  The April 19th tragedy would shake this nation to its core.

Many suspected Muslim terrorists were behind such a despicable act.  Just 12 years before, suicide bombers had killed 305 people at two military barracks in Beirut, Lebanon and the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York occurred only 2 year ago.  A voice for calm in the Boston area was Canadian talk show host Charles Adler who had a local television program called Adler On Line.  He urged people to wait for the facts and not jump to any conclusions.  On April 21st, we were shocked to see composite sketches of two white men labeled John Doe #1 and #2 on the front page of the newspaper.  As it turned out, the attack's mastermind wasn't some religious fanatic but an anti-government army veteran seeking revenge for the sieges at Waco, Texas and Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

People today often lament how divided society has become in recent years but I can tell you the 1990s had its fair share of divisiveness.  An infamous and poorly-timed fundraising letter from the National Rife Association sent out just days before the bombing referred to federal agents as “jack-booted thugs” prompting George H. W. Bush to resign his lifetime membership in May of 1995.  Some blamed talk radio for inspiring the attack and in a speech a week after the bombing, President Bill Clinton stated, “We hear so many loud and angry voices in America today whose sole goal seems to be to try to keep some people as paranoid as possible and the rest of us all torn up and upset with each other. They spread hate; they leave the impression that, by their very words, that violence is acceptable.”  One editorial cartoon at the time featured a take on the iconic photo of an Oklahoma firefighter carrying a dead infant...only a thought bubble was added that read, “Damn right-wing radio...”  The firefighter in question later said that was not what was going through his mind in that moment adding they regularly listened to Rush Limbaugh in the firehouse.  Even a tragedy of this magnitude could not stop elements of the left and the right from taking swipes at each other.

Like Pearl Harbor and the JFK assassination, the Oklahoma City Bombing was another “loss of innocence” moment for the United States.  I watched one television network's special on the terrorist attack and toward the end they paid tribute to the victims by flashing each one of their names on the screen with an accompanying photo.  The segment seemed to go on forever and it really underscored the true toll of the tragedy.  The website for the Oklahoma City National Memorial Museum has all of the victims listed here: https://memorialmuseum.com/experience/their-stories/those-who-were-killed/
 
In the years after the attack, there was talk of putting taggants in the type of fertilizer used to make the bomb but the idea was dismissed as being too costly and ineffective.  1998 saw the debut of The X-Files Movie: Fight The Future and a scene featuring the destruction of a federal building looked very similar to what we saw in Oklahoma City.  At the time, I thought it was tasteless and exploitative and I still do.  However, I wonder if younger audiences would even get the reference.  Last year, I posted a tribute to the bombing on a Catholic prayer website and one forum user who was in his 20s said he had never heard of it before.  How sad.  What are they teaching kids these days?

Unfortunately, the enormity of the 9-11 terrorist attacks just 6 years later overshadowed the Oklahoma City Bombing but I find many similarities in both tragedies:

* On April 19th, almost all of the victims were just going about their normal routines before their lives were cut short.

* Stories of heartbreak and near misses emerged: One man who was supposed to be at the Murrah Building that morning overslept and was running late which saved his life.  A woman who was in a meeting with her fellow co-workers survived the blast while everyone else was killed.  A man lost his life because he decided to drop by the Federal Building at the last minute to have some paperwork processed.  Three people died in other buildings, one was killed in a parking lot across the street and a rescue worker lost her life in the aftermath of the attack from injuries sustained by falling debris.

* A city's skyline changed forever and for a time the site of the Murrah Building was referred to as ground zero.  A fitting memorial preserving the lost structure's footprint took years to complete and features thoughtful symbolism as well as a survivor tree.

* Tighter security measures were instituted and in Boston I saw jersey barriers go up at various government buildings.

* There were calls for prayer.  One Boston Herald editorial written by Joe Fitzgerald urged us to hold onto our religious convictions and not call on God only when we needed something from Him in a time of crisis.  The uncredited AP photo of two Oklahoma teens at a prayer service appeared in his poignant article and is the first image in this blog entry.

I tend to remember the anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing only because April 19th coincides with a personal anniversary of mine but this year, it almost slipped by me.  There wasn't any coverage in the news and no one in my life could tell me what had taken place on that day 27 years ago.  9-11 is certainly much easier to remember because the date of the attack is actually in its name.  What happened at New York's World Trade Center also unfolded on live television and was captured from many different angles making those memories all the more gut wrenching. 

In some respects, the world is a much different place than it was in 1995.  Just when you think we're starting to learn from the past, humanity keeps raising the bar when it comes to violence and gore.  School shootings...mass shootings...and now the wholesale slaughter of civilians in Ukraine.  Perhaps we've become a little numb to other people's misery or maybe we feel helpless to change things for the better.

Last year, I found more than a few articles on the internet discussing how the Oklahoma City Bombing has faded into the distant background of our collective consciousness.  I hope what's written here helps us all remember a little more easily.  We owe it to the victims and to ourselves.

The Wheat From The Chaff

In these times of increased isolation, having strong connections with the people in my life has become very important. Unfortunately, the pandemic has separated the wheat from the chaff as far as my friends and acquaintances are concerned.

During the Covid-19 lock downs of 2020, having in-person get-togethers became difficult to impossible but this was completely understandable given some of the situations people faced. One friend couldn't leave his mother's apartment at all because it was located in an old age complex and he was living with her illegally. Another friend cut back on all social interactions because her long-time boyfriend had immunity issues.

You'd think with the prevalence of social media and smart phones, maintaining friendships would be fairly easy but some of the people in my life have simply disappeared without a trace. Others chime in only sporadically and it has me questioning how strong our bonds were in the first place.

The Wheat: often use social media to keep in touch with others which keeps those strong connections intact.

The Chaff: often use social media to post trivial or inflammatory content but they can't be bothered sending the simplest of personal messages.

One of my friends is an extremely busy freelancer but she still finds time to send the occasional e-mail or Facebook post every now and then and she always responds to any message I send even if it takes her several days to get back to me.

Unfortunately, far too many of my other friends think sending no response to the messages they receive is perfectly acceptable. Before the pandemic, one particular acquaintance would sometimes invite me to hang out with him at a few of the bars in his neighborhood. During these cordial visits we talked about our hopes, fears and defeats without judgment and we both enjoyed each other's company. A few months into the Covid lock downs, I decided to send him a quick message on Facebook just to let him know he was in my thoughts and that I hoped he was okay. There was nothing but silence. This really bothered me so after a while I sent along a few cricket emojis. Still no response even though the small chat icon indicated that he read my messages. It makes me wonder how hard sending a thumbs up emoji, a “Thanks”, or a “Too busy to talk now” response really is? Two years later, he randomly sent me a video on old trains in Europe. Sad to say, I've had better conversations with internet trolls than I've had with some of my friends.

The Wheat: also pick up the phone and call every now and then. One good friend who lives on the other side of the country talks to me almost every week during his ride home from work.  Our conversations can be very deep at times but they're usually filled with a lot of humor.

The Chaff: are difficult to get a hold of. I'll usually get their voice mail and after I leave a message, they never seem to get back to me. There's also a good chance that automated female voice will say, “The mailbox is full...goodbye.”

The Wheat: make what you have to say a priority.  Our conversations are warm and friendly and I often feel energized when we get off the phone.

The Chaff: are always distracted. Sometimes they're watching a movie or TV show and won't pause it. Worse still is when another person is in the background and they're trying to have two conversions at the same time. If I'm lucky enough to call them when they aren't busy, their smart phone's connection might be terrible or the signal drops...several times. I usually get a busy signal when I call them back because they haven't realized we've been disconnected. Or, the phone they are using has a low battery and they have to cut the conversation short.

As we entered 2021 and some restrictions were loosened, getting together with people no longer seemed like an impossibility and I was hoping to meet up with some of my friends and acquaintances in the real word.

The Wheat: make every effort to plan in-person get-togethers even if it takes a while to pin down a date. My freelancer friend was so busy with projects and deadlines, she just couldn't find the time to hang out with me one-on-one. However, she kept me apprised of some of the interesting art exhibits in her neighborhood and we agreed to see each other there even if it was only for a quick visit.

The Chaff: ignore invitations to hang out even if I add an extra incentive like offering to treat them to dinner. They seldom initiate meet ups and after a while, the one-sided nature of the relationship is revealed because I seem to be doing all the work to maintain the friendship.

Interestingly enough, very few of my friends have access to an automobile so when we try to get together, transportation becomes an issue.

The Wheat: appreciate the fact that I've driven many miles just to see them. When my freelancer friend finally suggested getting together one-on-one for the first time in two years, she told me that some of her friends had asked if they could tag along to the art gallery we planned to visit.  She shot that idea down because she didn't want me to feel like the odd man out. I thought it was very considerate of her and we went on to have a wonderful time just catching up without any interruptions or the need to explain our personal jokes to people I didn't know.

The Chaff: use me for my transportation. After planning to go out to breakfast with one friend, he conveniently asked if I could also drive him to work so he wouldn't have to take the bus. In December of 2021, he insisted we meet up a few towns over so he could give me a Christmas present. I was so tired from work I asked if we could postpone it. He wouldn't take no for an answer so I gave in, drove out to see him and then wound up taking him back to his house despite my lack of sleep. Turns out, he had been delivering presents to his friends that day and simply wanted to get it over with.  In the past, this same friend has also invited his friends to hang out with us even though he knows I don't get along with them.

The Wheat: respect your boundaries.

The Chaff: cross them.

People often complain that the pandemic has significantly increased their feelings of loneliness and anxiety. It's gotten so bad, some moms have organized group screaming sessions to alleviate their tensions. These uncertain times have certainly made me reevaluate my relationships with others and right now I'd say there are only two people in my life who are really good friends. While others drag me down and drain me of my energy, they make me feel free in a climate of mutual respect. If all we have in this world is each other then I wonder why so many friends and acquaintances just aren't there anymore.

A Very Blah Christmas

Thanks to the Covid-19 lock-down, 2020 saw many stir crazy people decorate early for Christmas with some cities and towns being decked out for the holidays by October. This year, something seemed to be a bit off.  I noticed a few dark houses in my neighborhood that would normally be lit with Christmas decorations. A nearby apartment complex that usually saw some tenants put trees in their windows was also curiously devoid of any holiday lights.  There were still those houses that went all out with elaborate Christmas displays, but it was the occasional pocket of darkness along neighborhood streets that had me wondering if people were too emotionally exhausted to fully embrace the Christmas spirit.  When I pointed this phenomenon out to an acquaintance from the nearby town of Marblehead, at first he said there were still fantastic light displays from the houses located along the coast but then he did admit to seeing near-dark neighborhoods in his travels too.

A few of my friends told me they had no desire to decorate for Christmas and they found themselves struggling to finish putting up a tree before the week of Dec. 25th.  Perhaps it was because 2021 seemed like nothing more than a continuation of the miserable year that 2020 was.

While I had made an effort to decorate for Christmas in 2020, I just wasn't in the mood this year.  As the first two weeks of December passed by in a blur, our house was in danger of not being decorated at all.  For 50 years, my family put red Christmas lights in the windows and some of those original bulbs which were purchased a long time ago at now defunct department stores like Zayre's and Rich's still worked.  Well, I didn't want to break a half century of tradition so I mustered up enough strength to drag those lights out of the basement once again.

In years past, my mother and I set up two Christmas trees since she had so many beautiful ornaments to put on display.  In 2019, we decorated the small table top tree that usually graced our back porch because her chronic aches and pains were becoming much worse.  We used that same small tree again in 2020 and despite a hectic work schedule, I still found time to put up most of the Christmas decorations around the house.

This year was definitely different.  With so little free time and not much motivation to put up Christmas decorations, we had to settle for the tiny ceramic light up tree that was usually placed in an upper hallway corner.  We didn't do much else for Christmas aside from a front door wreath and a handful of small ornaments around the house.  For the first time ever, we didn't have a nativity scene, advent wreath or stockings.  It was a very blah Christmas all around and my lack of enthusiasm for what should have been a joyous and holy day was troubling.

The extremely busy work schedule that prevented me from blogging more often was taking its toll. Our bosses were doing very well financially because of the pandemic but 2021 saw my hours get cut and my yearly pay go down.  While other companies were offering higher wages and incentives to attract new employees and retain old ones, our company bellyached about razor-thin profit margins.  They may have congratulated us for a job well done but they weren't too enthusiastic about giving us a much-needed cost of living increase. It's no wonder many people who felt underpaid and overworked simply walked off the job this year.

My company often talks about striking a balance between your work and home life but I found myself spending the past year not having time to put up decorations for several holidays including Easter, Halloween and Thanksgiving.  So much for a healthy work / life balance.

As the final hour of 2021 slips away forever, I say good riddance but this sentiment is tempered by misgivings about 2022.  Many of us are still anxious about the uncertainty of these unprecedented times.  Inflation is on the rise. Shortages continue.  Quality connections with other people seem lacking and the internet is a poor substitute.  There's an uptick in the number of Covid cases again with some communities reinstating mask mandates while others consider doing so.  This new normal has left many of us far too weary and holidays like Christmas just don't feel the same anymore.

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.

A House Divided

I ended the last blog entry by mentioning how a refusal to take communion in the hand during the pandemic could be an indication of a much bigger problem facing the Catholic Church.  We are a divided faith.
 
So you have two Catholics who both attend Mass every week.  Both are in agreement on the Church's major hot button issues like abortion, pre-marital sex and gay marriage.  Both have noticed the Church's decline over the years with low Mass attendance and the graying out of parishes.  So you'd think these two people would naturally find a sense of kinship, right?  Wrong.

Instead, very big disagreements erupt about the smallest of things and nowhere is this more prevalent than on the variety of Catholic blogs, websites and online forums.  For all the theories on where the Church went wrong, a good number of traditionalists place the blame squarely on Vatican II.  In their minds, the Church was once a very strong institution with no major problems whatsoever until 1965...

...the year the Church embraced liberalism, houses of worship were gutted, and the Mass lost its reverence causing attendance to sharply decline and making religion less important in people's lives.  Some forum users espousing this claim tend to be older so they are obviously drawing on childhood memories to back up their opinions.  But as the saying goes, correlation isn't necessarily causation and while some studies say Vatican II absolutely damaged the Church, other studies indicate a decline well before the early 1960s.  Rising skepticism, materialism, the sexual revolution, television, and other factors have certainly taken their toll on Christianity in America.  It's very convenient for traditionalists to blame just one thing instead of taking a comprehensive look at history and even if Vatican II never happened, it's likely the shocking discovery of the priest sex abuse scandal would have lead many to question the Church and their faith.
 
Younger Catholic keyboard warriors who never lived through the changes created by Vatican II use an array of articles, charts and graphs to form and defend their viewpoints but such information is rarely objective.  I think what these young people are really looking for is a comforting spiritual home full of absolutes amid the secular relativism that's wreaked havoc among their peers.

Opinions on Vatican II's impact are all over the map with some saying its intentions might have been good but its implementation was a disaster.  Whatever the case may be, we now have a community of online “trad” Catholics who regularly pick fights with anyone who might disagree with them.  If you think you're 100% Catholic, they think they're 150% Catholic.  Pope Francis is suspect, feminism made women too uppity and oh, and it's not the Church's job to help Catholic singles.  One forum user I encountered was an older gentleman who lamented the day his parish introduced “hippie music” into the Mass.  By that he meant singers who played guitars and tambourines.  So where was it ever stated in the Bible that Jesus preferred the pipe organ?

In fact, one of my fondest memories from St. John the Evangelist in Beverly was when a father and his very attractive teen-aged daughter became cantors.  He played an electric acoustic guitar and they both sang very passionately.  I was an impressionable altar boy at that time and in addition to their beautiful music, I loved the daughter's two-handed handshakes during the sign of peace.

This forum user then went on to complain about all the choices Catholics had when it came to their faith.  I challenged him by asking, “How sustainable would our religion be if it relied solely on rote learning and fear?”  A nun with a ruler who routinely whacked her students probably drove more people away from the Church than a singer with a tambourine.

Then there's the Latin Mass.  Some feel this is the only legitimate Catholic Mass and during online discussions the phrase novus ordo (new order) is tossed around like a derogatory term.  One young trad posting to a forum expressed exasperation with his fellow novus ordo Catholics by saying, "If I had a dime every time someone said the Latin Mass was boring..."  I remarked, "If I had a dime every time someone said the sky was blue..."  My mother, who was born about 30 years before Vatican II is no fan of the Latin Mass because she felt it created a wall between the clergy and their flock.  During the early 2000s, the pastor of my church was a young but traditional priest named Fr. David Barnes and he sometimes injected a little bit of Latin into the Mass.  I didn't like it at all and was thankful to have grown up with Masses in the vernacular.  Was I less Catholic for feeling that way?

Fr. Barnes was also a proponent of communion on the tongue, making the case that it should be the preferred way of receiving the Holy Eucharist.  Other trads believe this too sometimes saying it's a form of submission that feels like you are being fed by the Lord.  I contrast these opinions with that of Fr. Herbert Jones who was once pastor of the Carmelite Chapel at the Northshore Mall.  During a sermon, the elderly priest told us he was resistant to communion on the hand at first but grew to love it because he felt closer to his parishioners.  So we have two devout priests with two very different viewpoints.  Which one is correct?  Perhaps what's most important is that people are going to Mass in the first place...not out of fear or blind obedience but because they want to.

Just Take It!

When churches in the Boston Archdiocese reopened in the midst of the pandemic last year, several safety protocols were in place.  Seating capacity was limited to just a fraction of what it used to be and in our parish, every other pew was roped off with blue masking tape.  To ensure social distancing, the remaining pews were marked with Xs every six feet using that same blue tape.  Hand shaking was out along with ushers passing the collection basket.  Instead parishioners were encouraged to place their weekly donations into a small bin at the church's entrance.  Hand sanitizer stations were placed at every doorway and parishioners had to make reservations in order to attend Mass.  At times, our temperatures were taken with a hand-held thermometer before we entered the building but other times we just walked right in after our names were checked off a list.  
 
One of the most dramatic changes during Mass was how communion was distributed.  Instead of forming a line and approaching the altar, parishioners now remained seated while the priest and a few Eucharistic ministers delivered the host to everyone by walking across those empty pews.  And here is where something of a controversy begins.
 
Some people feel that it's a lot safer in these times if parishioners wishing to receive communion simply hold out their hands so the priest can drop the host into waiting palms without having to touch anyone.  A few archdioceses have even gone so far as to ban communion on the tongue and this ruling has been upheld by the Vatican.  
 
In our church, I think the priests just assumed everyone would follow this guideline because when one parishioner wanted to have the host placed on his tongue during that first "post-Covid lockdown" Mass of 2020, my pastor looked very confused and wondered what to do next.  He then told the parishioner that he would oblige but only after everyone else had received communion on the hand first.  After giving this person communion, our pastor returned to the altar to liberally spray his hands down with sanitizer.  

Over the next few weeks, anyone who wanted communion on the tongue had to wait until everyone else received it by hand.  Then at some point, our pastor changed this practice.  Now communion would be given to everyone right then and there and if someone wanted it placed on their tongue, the priest or Eucharistic minister would do so immediately.  Then they would return to the altar, spray their hands with hand sanitizer, and continue to distribute the host as usual.  Two problems quickly arose from this new procedure, however.
 
Some Masses were attended by several people who wanted to receive communion on the tongue so instead of delivering the hosts to everyone in a timely manner, the priest or Eucharistic minister had to stop, walk all the way back to the altar and spray their hands down before returning to the pews.  Suddenly the well-oiled machine of socially distant worshiping ground to a halt.  While I was glad to see people attend Mass, this start / stop way of of handing out communion got pretty annoying fast.  There are times when I find myself yelling in my mind at these worshipers, “Just take it!”
 
The other problem occurred when more than one person in the same group wanted communion on the tongue.  The priest or Eucharistic minister would grab a host, place it on the tongue of one parishioner then reach back into the chalice for another host without sanitizing his hand!  Such a sight had me hoping and praying that these people didn't have Covid-19 because more often than not when the priest or Eucharistic minster placed a host on one person's tongue, he would reach in for another host but pick up two by mistake.  The second host was then allowed to fall back into the chalice to be given to some unsuspecting worshiper six feet away.
 
In a May 7, 2020 article from Church Militant on the subject, Father Jeffrey Robideau defends communion on the tongue during the pandemic remarking, "Where I did give Communion in the hand, I touched each and every hand.  With the tongue, I very rarely have any contact as described above. So you tell me which one is safer."  To that I say maybe this priest has fat fingers because I've never felt anyone accidentally bump into my hand when delivering the Eucharist.  It does seem pretty difficult to pluck out a single host from the chalice without touching other wafers, though.

The debate on the preferred way to receive communion is a pretty old one with some Catholics getting pretty riled up about it.  Some say communion on the hand isn't as reverent and sometimes these arguments quickly devolve into claims that Vatican II is the cause for most of the Church's problems.  I've had a few priests on either side of this debate lecture us from the pulpit but in reality most clergy tend not to care one way or another...just as long as you're going to Mass in the first place.

There are still many unknowns regarding Covid-19 so I think it's important that everyone errs on the side of caution.  The fact that some Catholics stubbornly refuse to do so tells me the Church has bigger problems to deal with than the pandemic.