Recently in catholic Category

Julie's been busy this weekend following up on the rally she attended Friday, hooking up with all of the organizing that's happening to save St. Mary's Church in Malaga NJ. She's taken lots of pictures of St. Mary's and yesterday made up t-shirts for the cause!

One positive element to come of the Bishop's decision to close down St. Mary's and half the Catholic churches in South Jersey is how parishioners are coming together for their churches. Julie's already typed in half of a 1997 history of St. Mary's onto the internet, and there are plans to interview elderly members, the oldest of whom remember the church being built.

The story of a little church in a sleepy rural town is the really the story of the Italian Catholic experience in America. There's a certificate in the back of the church that lists all of the donations that were collected to build the church, some from dirt poor farmers who couldn't even afford a dollar but still put all they could to build a house of worship.

To my Quaker readers: don't worry, I'm not going Catholic on you all. It's just that even I can tell there's something special about St. Mary's and the devotion and the newfound-feistiness of it's community (how did they makes the Times?! And two pictures!). The bishop wants to sell all these little rural churches and replace them with impersonal mega-churches. The struggle for authenticity, humanity and the remembrance of the experience of those who struggled before us transcends religious denominations. We'd all lose something if churches like St. Mary's were all torn down to make way for more Super Wawa's.

Tags: southjersey, catholic, st mary's, malaga, nj, diocese of camden, bishop galiante, farmers, italian, authenticity

Julie and Theo took a bus into Camden NJ this morning to attend a rally in support of St Mary's. It's one of dozens of churches that the Diocese of Camden has slated for closure. St. Mary's Father Romanowski was scheduled to meet Bishop Galante today but the Bishop canceled at the last minute. Channel Six Action News profiled St Mary's a few days ago and the video gives you a little idea why it's a special little church. More pictures of the St Mary's rally here.

The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote an article on Julie’s traditionalist Catholic church this week and even produced a video that gives you a feel of the worship. Because of the two little ones we try to alternate between her church and Friends meeting on First Day mornings (though my crazy work schedule over the past few months have precluded even this). I’m in no danger of becoming the “Catholic Ranter” anytime soon (sorry Julie!) but I do appreciate the reverence and sense of purpose which Mater Ecclessians bring to worship and even I have culture shock when I go to a norvus ordo mass these days. Commentary on the Inquirer piece courtesy Father Zuhlsdorf. That blog and the Closed Cafeteria are favorites around here. Here’s a few pictures of us at the church following baptisms.

PS: I wish the Catholic Church as a whole were more open-minded when it comes to LGBT issues. That said, the sermons on the issue I’ve heard at Mater Ecclesiae have gone out of their way to emphasize charity. That said, I’ve occasionally heard some under the breath comments by parishioners that weren’t so charitable. Yet another reason to stay the Quaker Ranter.

PPS: And please, no comments on why the Catholic church is wrong, why Julie left Friends, why the Tridentine Mass is a step backwards, yada yada yada. I’m posting these links to share something of our lives. Thanks.

The retreat at the Carmelite Monastery was nice. Here’s some pictures, the first of those long-remembered tall stone walls and the rest of the beautiful chapel:

It was a silent retreat—for us at least. There were three talks about Teresa of Avila given by Father Tim Byerley, who also works with the Collegium Center, a kind of religious education outreach project for young adult Catholics in South Jersey (I mentioned it a few months ago as a model of young adult youth outreach that Friends might want to consider). Much of what Teresa has to say about prayer is universal and very applicable to Friends, though I have to admit I started spacing out by around the fourth mansion of the Interior Castle (I’ve never been good with numbered religious steps!).

I’m in no danger of following my wife Julie’s journey from Friends to Catholicism, though as always I very much enjoyed being in the midst of a gathered group committed to a spirituality. The idea of religious life as self-abnegation is an important one for all Christians in an age where me-ism has become the secular state religion and I hope to return to it in the near future.

Tomorrow Julie and I are going on an all-day Lenten retreat at a Carmelite Monastery on Old York Road in Philadelphia. She’s given me creedal cheat sheets in case I feel led to read along, as I have to fake it on anything past the The Lord’s Prayer.

The monastery has forty-foot tall stone walls all around and is located a few blocks from where I grew up (picture courtesy the monastery’s organist’s webpage) and it was a place of some intrigue. Whenever we would drive by I’d press my face against the car windows thinking maybe I’d catch a glimpse of a nun swinging herself over the wall in an escape attempt. Needless to say I wasn’t brought up Catholic or even Catholic-friendly and so didn’t realize how ridiculous this imagining of mine was. Still, I’ve probably never passed the monastery as an adult without taking a quick peek at those walls. In twelve hours I enter them myself!

Julie’s gone on the retreat a number of times (it’s usually women-only) and has always been released to my connubial arms at end’s day. Still, just in case something happens, y’all know where to look! The kids are going to be with Julie’s sister and their cousin and should have a good time.

Julie, my wife, has just started a Yahoo group called “PlainAndModestDress”:http://www.nonviolence.org/cgi-bin/axs/ax.pl?http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PlainAndModestDress. Here’s her description:

bq. This group is for Christians interested in discussing issues of religious plain and modest dress. It is not necessary to have grown up in a plain or modestly dressing group. We are especially interested in the experiences of those who have come to this point as a sort of conversion or a “recovery” of tradition that has been lost. Traditional Catholics, Anabaptists, conservative Quakers, and other Christians welcome here. Theological points and demoninational differences are open for discussion (not argument), as are the specifics of what type of plain dress you have been called to. Discussion of headcovering is also allowed here, as are gender distinctions in dress. We may also share prayers for one another, as well as the challenges we face in trying to live in obedience to the Lord. This is not a forum in which to discuss the validity of Christianity—no blaspheming allowed.

There is much to be said about plain dress. This is not an easy witness. It forces us to deal with issues of submission and humility on a daily basis—just try to go to a convenience store and not feel self-consciously set apart. Explaining this new ‘style’ to one’s more worldly friends can be quite a challenge. These are eternal issues for those adopting plain dress and I laugh with comradeship when I read old Quaker journal accounts of going plain.

Even so, I have a bit of trepidation about a newsgroup on plain dress. I don’t want to fetishize plain dress by talking about it too much. The point shouldn’t be to formulate some sort of ‘uniform of the righteous,’ and adoption of this testimony shouldn’t be motivated by peer pressure or ambition, but by a calling from the Holy Spirit—this is the crux of what I understand Margaret Fell to have been saying when she called pressured plainness a “silly poor gospel”. (I should say that some non-Quaker do dress more as an identifying uniform, which is fine, just not necessarily the Quaker rationale).

But like any outward form or testimony (peace, Quaker process, etc.), taking up plain dress can be a fruitful course in religious education. I think back to being seventeen and bucking my father’s wish that I attend the Naval Academy—my “no” made me ask how else my beliefs about peace might need to be acted out in my life. It became a useful query. Plain dress has forced me to think anew about how I “consume” clothing and how I relate to mass marketing and the global clothing industry. It’s also kept me from ducking out on my faith, as I wear an indentification of my beliefs.

So “join the plain dress discussion”:http://www.nonviolence.org/cgi-bin/axs/ax.pl?http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PlainAndModestDress or take a look at the ever-growing section of the site called “Resources on Quaker Plain Dress”:/Quaker/plain_dress.php, which includes “My Experiments with Plainness”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/archives/000080.php, my early story about going plain.

Colleen Carroll’s book The New Faithful is an attempt to examine the religious phenomenon of Christian theological “orthodoxy” among current twenty and thirty-somethings. We purchased this book out of a sense of longing to hear the stories of fellow young Christians sympathetic to the issues we face. We opened The New Faithful eager to hear the voice of someone in our age bracket crying from the rooftops. But her book is hardly unproblematic: she weakened the book when she decided to make it a Republican-Party calling card…

Oh my gosh, TheOoze has an amazing article on called “Orthodox Twenty-Somethings”:www.theooze.com/articles/article.cfm?id=590 (a review of The New Faithful and “The Younger Evangelicals”:http://www.nonviolence.org/Quaker/emerging_church.php, a great book I’ve recommended. Read this article if you want to understand why Julie’s at “Mater Ecclesiae”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/archives/000111.php and why I’m “plain dressing”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/archives/000080.php. This is a bona fide phenomenon, folks.

bq. None of this is supposed to be happening because it’s not the project for which two generations of Protestant and Catholic clergy have worked… The push for relativist moral teaching, “simplified” worship, interchangeable sex roles, and an utter separation of private belief from political expression has come from the pulpit as readily as it has been demanded by pseudo-intellectual elites. But against all odds, portions of a modern American society, which groans to find itself secularist, is returning in a quiet revolution to the fundamental truths of the Christian religion.

Meanwhile, no one should miss Melynda Huskey’s wonderful rant in the “comments of the Beyond Majority Rule review”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/beyondthemacguffinssheeransbeyondmajorityrule.php#c154 Warning: it skewers a beloved Quaker institution!

bq. Or maybe it was just the general whiff of the tomb—a really old tomb, all scent of decay long gone, and nothing left but dust and dead air. No Quakers here, pal. No George Fox rebuking priests from the next aisle. No Isaac Pennington seizing the moment of the Restoration to make Quakers as unpopular with the King and Court as they had been with the Protector and the Commonwealth. No Mary Dyer ready to swing off the gallows and into Glory for the sake of Light.

A review of Michael Sheeran’s “Beyond Majority Rule”:http://www.Quakerbooks.org/get/0-941308-04-9. Twenty years later, do Friends need to experience the gathered condition?

I guess folks might wonder why the son of the Quaker Ranter is getting baptized in a Roman Catholic church…

On November 1, Theo was freed from sin.

Julie & Theo getting ready at home. Julie, Theo & Maia waiting in church lobby. Theo memorizing his lines before the big event (all Nov. 1).

Theo, freed of sin: Godmothers Becky & Jess, Father Pasley, Theo & the parents.

Everyone wants to hold Theo. Susan, Tom and Patty get their turn.

Below: Theo smiling in chair, Nov. 8

And for those readers of Martin Kelley Quaker Ranter wondering why his son is getting baptized, see Are Catholics More Quaker?