'n Kerk wat groei...

Ek lees die volgende berig in Sondag se New York Times oor ‘n groeiende kerk in Mahattan. Die berig laat my dink aan baie van die kwessies wat ook in die debat oor kerkvernuwing hier by ons ter sprake is. 

Die kerk kombineer ‘n spesiale liturgiese inkleding wat mense geestelik aanspreek met goeie prediking en musiek, maar is ook aktief by sosiale kwessies. Een na die ander kerkganger vertel van hul goeie ervarings en op die manier versprei die woord gou onder mense dat hul innerlike behoeftes tog iewers in ‘n kerk aangespreek word.  Hier is die berig:

A LINE of priests, chanting choir members, and altar girls and boys, all dressed in red and white robes, streamed down Duffield Street in Downtown Brooklyn last weekend, leading the Palm Sunday street procession at the Oratory Church of St. Boniface.

Behind them were about 400 people, including elderly parishioners, young parents with toddlers in tow and giggling children waving palm leaves in the air. The crowd squeezed through the church doors and filled the small nave so quickly that ushers unfolded chairs at the entrance to accommodate it.

Amid the buzz, Kevin Rooney, 29, a lawyer who lives in Downtown Brooklyn, said he and his wife had visited other Roman Catholic churches before deciding to join St. Boniface. The nearby Cathedral Basilica of St. James was beautiful, he recalled, “but it didn’t feel like a community, not like this.”

The vibrancy of St. Boniface makes a stark contrast to many moribund parishes across New York City. Others may be full this Easter Sunday, but St. Boniface attracts an average of 700 people a weekend, remarkable when only about a third of Roman Catholics registered with the Diocese of Brooklyn and the Archdiocese of New York attend services on an ordinary Sunday, according to a spokesman for the organizations. Social justice programs, like a secular nonprofit group that helps support a community in Kenya, and homilies flecked with literary allusions draw a diverse and impressive crowd, with many writers, civic leaders and professionals in the mix.

The church’s high ritual and its open and inclusive approach appeal to people born to the faith, converts, Christians of other denominations and, particularly, young families. The priests have also made a special point of welcoming Catholics who have been distressed by some of the church’s politics or its sometimes rigid hierarchy.

St. Boniface is an example of an intentional parish, a phrase some members of the clergy use to describe a destination church that attracts people from beyond its geographic boundaries. Many gay and lesbian Catholics travel to the Church of St. Francis Xavier in Chelsea. Some traditionalists attend the Latin Mass at the Church of St. Agnes in Midtown, and foreign language speakers often go distances to hear Mass in their mother tongues. But St. Boniface stands out because the vast majority of those who worship there do not live within the parish’s boundaries but come from across Brooklyn and Manhattan, some even from the suburbs.

There are many denominations of Protestants, allowing worshipers to choose churches that reflect their values and priorities. But until recently, parish shopping was unheard of among Catholics, who, for generations, went lockstep to their local churches.

Indeed, Catholics in New York’s immigrant enclaves often identified themselves according to parish, not neighborhood.

“It was just the vernacular, ‘Which parish do you live in?’ ” recalled Justice Robert J. Miller of the New York State Supreme Court, who grew up in Brooklyn. He now drives to St. Boniface from Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, but in the 1950s, he said, the parish “was your world.”

Catholics no longer live in a Catholic world, explained David Gibson, author of “The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful Are Shaping a New American Catholicism,” and a St. Boniface parishioner.

“Catholicism now is more about making choices,” he said, and for some, that means traveling to parishes where they feel affirmed.

“MEETING them where they are” is a mantra among St. Boniface’s five priests and a lay brother, who make it a point to invite new faces to monthly home-cooked lunches in the rectory.

But the inclusive philosophy has a stickier side. While the priests hold true to and convey all the church’s teachings, whether from the Vatican, the United States Conference of Bishops or the Diocese of Brooklyn, they accept that not everyone in the pews does.

When a lesbian couple approached one of the priests, the Rev. Mark Lane, about baptizing their child, they were afraid he would turn them away, he said. But they were welcomed. For Father Lane, 55, the parish’s openness simply reflected Christ’s teachings to love everyone. Even if that could be taken as an implicit critique of the church’s position on homosexuality, the parish did not make the family occasion into a cause.

“The danger is, you turn that into a platform and forget about the persons involved, and I think that’s wrong,” Father Lane said. The two mothers stood at the font with their child along with everyone else. “The symbol is visually powerful, but that’s enough.”

The priests prefer to address controversial issues like same-sex marriage and the death penalty outside of Mass, and while anti-abortion marches are listed in the church bulletin, they are not announced after services. Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, head of the Diocese of Brooklyn, recently wrote a letter condemning the Obama administration’s mandate that health insurance cover birth control; the letter was distributed in the church, but the priests have preferred to address the debate one on one with parishioners.

“It is not to be evasive about any important issues,” the Rev. Joel Warden said of the approach, “but rather to create hospitality so people on both extremes could feel comfortable here.”

St. Boniface’s culture is rooted in its unique structure, Father Warden added. While most Catholic churches have priests on 12-year assignments, St. Boniface’s five priests and its brother are committed to the parish for their entire lives as part of the Community of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, an international Catholic society. Unlike priests assigned by a diocese, Father Warden said, “I’m not here to execute an individual vision of what the parish should be.” He added, “I’m working in collaboration.”

The Brooklyn Oratory arrived at St. Boniface in 1990, when the number of parishioners had dwindled to 50. Its ministry in Downtown Brooklyn largely meant repairing the boiler, painting the gloomy nave white and gently asking prostitutes to move off the church steps. The construction of luxury condos nearby has brought new families in recent years. But the parish had to grow by word of mouth.

At the monthly social hour of the Brooklyn Oratory Young Professionals recently, three dozen parishioners in their 20s and 30s mingled around a table of pigs in blankets, carafes of wine and bottles of Brooklyn Brewery beer.

With a cup of sparkling water in hand, Amanda Straub, 38, of Park Slope, Brooklyn, said she had resumed attending Mass regularly only a year ago. The sex-abuse scandals had not kept her away, she said, nor had any particular church policy. “I just didn’t know what place it should have in my life,” she said. Having read about St. Boniface in a profile of Linda Gibbs, a deputy mayor in the Bloomberg administration, Ms. Straub went to a Saturday evening Mass. The homily enthralled her, and she kept coming back.

Pedro De Oliveira, 31, lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, but attends St. Boniface, where he counts the priests among his closest friends. “I think our generation asks much more, ‘Why am I doing this?’ ” he said. “They’re much less likely to go to church because it’s a rule.”

Church leaders are concerned about young people leaving the faith in the time between when they leave home and when they marry, and some consider the decline in Catholic weddings in the city — the number in the New York Archdiocese fell to 4,679 in 2010, from 10,803 in 1990 — to be a troubling indicator. Citing the problem of keeping unmarried adults in the fold, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, archbishop of New York, recently gave parish shopping a soft endorsement. At a conference at Fordham University in January, Cardinal Dolan responded to a young Catholic disappointed with his local parish by saying: “I don’t mind telling you to be rather mercantile. If the particular parish that you’re in does not seem to be listening, there are an abundance of those that are.”

Msgr. Kieran E. Harrington, a spokesman for the Diocese of Brooklyn, is not a fan of the practice. Though the number of people who travel to parishes outside their neighborhoods is too small to make a real impact on the diocese, he said, he feels that it’s a Catholic’s duty to worship locally.

“The church is about growing where you’re planted,” said Monsignor Harrington, the pastor at the Church of St. Joseph in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, which draws longtime Haitian and Hispanic residents and recently arrived white professionals.

“It’s like a family,” he said. “You don’t choose your family.”

Serena Derryberry, 44, a physician, confessed that she felt guilty for not keeping her body — and her resources — in the struggling parish near her home. It is a soaring but broken-down cathedral where pews sit largely empty and an echo makes it impossible to hear the homily. Sitting in it, she said, “is depressing, lonely.”

“I’m too selfish,” she said, filing out of Mass at St. Boniface, her toddler son in her arms. “I want to go where I’m having a good experience, and not have to work at getting it.

Na die berig in die koerant skryf een van die lesers wat ook die kerk besoek die volgende kommentaar – wat ‘n mooi opsomming van die hart van die saak is. Die leser skryf:  

I'm at St. Boniface because of those priests and the community that emphasize the heart of Christ's message: love and fellowship and faith. A Catholic Church that encourages reflection and discussion is a Church that will continue to grow. A Church that doubles down on just a part of the Christian message and ostracizes those who disagree or just have questions will find its parishioners fleeing, and after all, the people are the Church, not just the leaders.