www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Parish Life & Evangelization The bane of Eastern Christianity in America

It COULD be evening prayer. It would also be a Divine Liturgy.

"You are blessed to have a priest , just saying." <-- a common excuse that's offered in my experience when there is any discussion of a poorly performing parish or pastor.

RC college students will happily show up for "Mass" late Sunday night.

Asking them to show up for an *extra* service, in addition to going to Mass that morning, is a whole 'nuther story.

I went to the 10 PM Mass for most of my time at Santa Clara. IIRC, there was a Saturday or two, and 4:30, 7:30, and 10:00 P.M. Sunday. [I think they did a couple of parish Masses for St. Claire's across the street for reasons I forgot, as it had its own Sunday mornings, also served by USC Jesuits]. In addition to being later, this was, by design, the quieter, "contemplative" Mass.

Folks would wander down the dorm, banging on doors, collecting people for Mass, and several would generally end up going together.

Then, partway through my time there (Senior Year?), the Music Mafia, err, "musicians", managed to take over--and I ended up going across the street to St. Claire's Sunday morning, with my girlfriend and a couple of my other more orthodox friends, for my remaining time there. [Yes, this was the time when "theologically suspect" was a generous way to describe student Masses and the, uhh, orthodoxy of the campus ministry offices at these schools.]

hawk

Oh, I misunderstood .

Great story, thanks... If I should drive by my EC parish on Sunday evening I wince. Being so close to campus the neighborhood is quite active at night. I think if the parish took the plunge and offered a DL at 9 or 10, followed by a very brief coffee social, that in short order this DL would soon draw more than the main 10:00 AM one. When I go to the Newman Center for Mass, I am struck at how orthodox the students are. I think they would absolutely eat-up the DL -- if someone ever made the effort to expose them to it.

Ain't gonna happen though. Well, that's not true. If we ever received the right pastor, the parish could at least double in size in a year. We had an OUTSTANDING "loaner pastor" for several months a few years ago. He was already making inroads when he was permanently replaced.

Exegete:

Glory be to Jesus Christ!!

A number of things you mention stand in your way:

1. Your pastor is closed to anything but providing the Mysteries in the ritual he was trained in. Thus he turned down the Newman Center outreach.
2. He is having a difficult time adjusting to the culture--something he needs help with, but if he is closed, you're sunk.
3. Opening to the college for a quiet study place was inspired, but shot down. Bet your pastor doesn't even care that the Presbyterians are doing it and he's missed the boat.
4. My son's University had the Newman Sunday Liturgy at 10 p.m. and he says it was packed. When he visited and had to go back to school by train it was the one he could make because the train left Sunday morning here at home.
5. People "on fire" soon leave a place where a wet blanket is thrown on every new idea. Ardor soon cools completely and people vote with their feet.
6. Priests with their own agenda--"rad-trad"--are part of the problem. And for anyone who says "you're lucky to have a priest"--sometimes you're not. (We had a control freak in our parish for about nine years and the parish went from one where everyone was encouraged to bring his gift and initiate things--the pastor was usually supportive of almost anything that brought people in--to one where it soon became a filling station and we are in danger.)

The things I've summarized paint a picture of a parish closing in the next decade as the "on fire" people age, give up, or move on, while the rest just watch the ship sink.

BTW, this is not just an Eastern Catholic problem; it's all of us who have pastors who think that "this is my parish and my way."

Bob

Exegete:

Rather than a DL on Sunday evening (which is not part of the tradition, so the pastor may not be comfortable with the notion) maybe you could convince the pastor to celebrate Vespers on Sunday Evenings during the Great Fast which is our tradition.

One of the problems of ministering to college students is just as they began to establish roots in a parish, they leave upon graduation. I’m not saying the Church should not minister to college students, but it does take a special cleric to understand how to meet the spiritual needs of the faithful that are “semi-nomadic”.

I don't mean to be rude, but the pastor is indolent in this specific case. As "dochawk" noted, most students wouldn't show up for evening prayer. They want to fulfill their obligation to attend Mass which may be done by attending the Divine Liturgy. That would get them in the door.

We're talking about extremely bright and rather devout students. I suspect a fair number would become captivated by the DL.

Yes, college students move on. However I live in an area where most do anything they can to remain.

If my parish had the right priest as a pastor, I strongly suspect that within 90 days, a 9 or 10:00 PM DL would be drawing more than the ~65 that attend the 10:00 Sunday DL.

Thank you for your comments, Bob. I fully agree. This parish is going to face a crisis because the pioneers who paid to establish it, and to some degree stuck around because of their "sunk cost" investment are slowly reposing. They'll come a point where there aren't enough to sustain it financially.

There's also the issue about real estate value. The church sits on extremely valuable land. I could see the eparchy selling it at some point. Thanks again.

The Latin Rite of the Catholic Church has never been larger in the history of the Church -- both worldwide and in the United States.

Exegete,

I find your comments more than rude, in fact they are in violation of the Forum rules, which, in part, state:

You agree, through your use of this service, that you will not use The Byzantine Forum to post any material which is unchristian, knowingly false and/or defamatory, accusatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, or otherwise violative of any law.

At best your comments are accusatory with respect to your pastor’s alleged shortcomings. At worst, your comments engage in detraction, if not calumny. This Forum is not the venue to question the motives behind the pastor’s prudential decision whether to schedule the celebration of the Divine Liturgy at a time to attract Latin Catholic college students.

In 2003, I attended a Theology of the Body forum in Gettysburg PA. One of the priest there was Fr. Thomas Loya. Between the sessions, I engaged Fr. Loya in discussion, happy to see him once again. I forget what the seque was into what he shared with me, but the comment I still remember is him saying "If the Byzantine Catholic Church in America doesn't learn to evangelize, it will be gone in 50 years." Since that discussion, I have learned (from somewhere on the Internet) that in the 1950's the Ruthenians had 250,000 members in the USA. Today, as I was led to understand, it is under 60,000.

Having found the beauty of the East and the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom as a convert, I was eager to share this beauty with as many people as possible. My first priest (I withhold his name so as not to identify the parish) was interested in my idea of developing an evangelization outreach to the neighborhoods around our parish. He passed on to his reward before this could take place. The priest who finally replaced him was hounded out of the parish because he wasn't pure Byzantine, but had the letters "S.J." behind his name. This represents yet another problem which Fr. Loya touched on - ethnicism rather than universal outreach. Instead of Christ we offer a country club for a particular ethnic group. That is not the way to attract people.

I recently visited the Orthodox parish across the street from my old parish. It is growing and vibrant. I don't know about my old parish, but I do know that several of the old members have "doxed" and gone across the street.

I thought about making some more comments, but they would transcend badly the boundaries of charity and border on personal attack. I will just say that for me, and probably for many of my old friends who are now Orthodox, it will snow in Hades before I ever step in a Ruthenian parish after the way I and my friends were spoken of and treated. For some reason I still get the ECN newspaper, even though I have been long gone for years. Every time I read an article about "charity" or that mentions treating people with respect, I almost spit my coffee all over the monitor.

Nuff said.

I find your attack to be far worse than merely rude. If I posted something that contravened the rules of this forum, the Christian thing to do would have been to warn me via a private message. Instead you viciously attacked me in public. That's just wrong. Shame on you!

Exegete,

I attempted to do just that, but your account has reached it limit for private messages, and I know no way to override that.

But you have accused your pastor on this forum, and he has no way to respond publically to your accusations. The Christian thing for YOU to do would have been to meet with him AGAIN accompanied by someone who shares your concerns.

As a moderator, I have the discretion to offer correction as I deem appropriate.

You are certainly free to report my post to the Administrator, and I will accept any correction he deems appropriate.

Now you're trying to justify your rude public behavior by blaming the condition of my forum in-box. No sale. If my in-box was truly full, all you had to do was post here, asking that I make room for your message and I would have done just that.

As a moderator you have the "discretion" to not approve/delete my posting. Why didn't you simply do that? It's almost as if you wanted to be rude.

In the end, you have no idea who I am, and you can only surmise who my pastor is. There's a level of anonymity that protects him -- you should have realized that. If others are able to deduce who is is, then they are doing it with the help of additional information from other sources.

I honestly do appreciate your comments. I think it honestly boils down to leadership -- at both the eparchy and individual parish level. If you don't have strong leadership, trying to ignite initiatives in parishes will be akin to pushing on a rope.

I have experienced strong leadership in my parish. The founding pastor was a strong and I would suggest gifted shepherd. Once the parish was fully established however, he was quite elderly and simply didn't have the energy to sustain the level he had long operated at. A temporary administrator that came after him clearly had well developed leadership skills. Many of us were literally in mourning when he was called back to the eparchy -- even though we knew from the beginning that his time with us was limited.

It's just a very difficult thing to experience the parish operating at an extremely high level, filled with hope and joy, and then experience it when that's all absent.