Jaweed Kaleem, Miami Herald, August 17, 2009
When Katrenia Reeves drives from her West Kendall home for weekly services at St. Philip Neri, she hears hymns dating to when her ancestors were slaves—Go Tell It on the Mountain and Somebody’s Knocking at Your Door—set to a background of drums and trumpets.
But the sounds of St. Philip Neri, built in 1952 by and for black parishioners, will be lost when the church shuts its doors next month as the Archdiocese of Miami closes 13 financially struggling congregations.
The archdiocese is encouraging the 141 members of St. Philip Neri to attend services at St. Monica, a Miami Gardens church where Ave Maria and the sounds of the organ may be more familiar.
“It’s the tradition, it’s culture, it’s the whole atmosphere we’re losing,” said Reeves, 60.
When Archbishop John C. Favalora said Sunday that he will close the churches, many of which serve minorities, he added that it is time for Catholics of different backgrounds to come together under bigger, more diverse churches.
But many parishioners of the black and Haitian churches facing closure say they see their congregations as an essential part of their spiritual lives.
“In a better world, we might all worship in one space equally . . . but I’m not expecting any kind of multicultural worship to happen,” said the Rev. John Cox, pastor of St. Francis Xavier in Overtown, another black church that will close.
Come October, St. Francis Xavier’s 114 members were told to attend Gesu in downtown Miami, the oldest Catholic church, but many members dislike the idea.
“Our people left Gesu in the age of segregation,” Cox said. “They had to sit in the colored-only pews in the back; they had to have First Communion after white people. We still have people alive who remember those days . . . that wouldn’t necessarily be the case today, but those memories are deep.”
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“Our aim is to be a place in the black community that is aware of the black story and aware of social issues that continue to prevail in black neighborhoods in order to have a strong sense of social justice,” Cox said.
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“We prefer to have our own church,” said 46-year-old Herold Eugene, who joined St. Joseph 25 years ago when he immigrated from Haiti. “We sing in Creole, we do worship dances. Our services are longer, up to two hours.”
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Catholic dioceses around the country have proposed dozens of church closures in recent months. Minority churches have been hard hit by closures, said Sister Jamie T. Phelps, director of the Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University in New Orleans.
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Original article
Email
Jaweed Kaleem
at jkaleem@MiamiHerald.com .
(Posted on August 18, 2009)
Comments
“When Archbishop John C. Favalora said Sunday that he will close the churches, many of which serve minorities, he added that it is time for Catholics of different backgrounds to come together under bigger, more diverse churches.”
That’s sad. I didn’t know there were any black Catholic churches. Their services are probably charming. I think spiritual music is probably the single area where blacks excel everyone else in the world. It would be better to keep them separate so the congregations can keep their own special character.
I find it peculiar that the diversity mongers seldom, if ever, allude to the fact that churches are about the most racially self-segregated instutions in America today. If that doesn’t show how basic human nature says people want to be with their own kind, I don’t know what does.
We just had the same type of malarkey here in N.J. recently. Interestingly, not said once in the article is that the mostly minority churches don’t pay for themselves. You have to pay the bills to keep anything open. Whether it be a church or a candy store or whatever it may be. Nothing is free in this world. Nothing! Even when we leave, the undertaker has to be paid.
Tom Iron…
I am sure the Cuban, Irish and Italian congregants can’t wait for these folks to show up!
If they supported their churches they wouldn’t need to close. End of story.
Don’t want your church to close? Then don’t close it. Just find a new place to meet and worship the way you see fit. In America, you have every right to do so. But this group won’t do that. Why? Because that would interrupt their pity party and put the responsibility on them, and not white people.
Seems the Catholic religion is practiced in different ways in different countries. Maybe the Pope better start speaking out on how they are distorting the Catholic Doctrines.
I turned my back on religion after a fool of a pastor made it his mission to integrate the church I attended. I figured that any congregation that would tolerate anything so stupid wasn’t something I wanted to be a part of. So now I put my money to better use than supporting their self-hating causes and socialist slop.
Black people, for the most part,. are professional leaches.
At the church I went to, there was a black woman on welfare who brought her kids to church. On special occasions, the church would have a potluck and she would show up with her brood, but never brought any food to contribute. Of course, her and her kids would avail themselves of all the food, twice-three-or-four times and then leave a mess.
She always took canned foods from the Charity pantry, but never put any in. The pastor gave her a job, under the table, to answer the telephone during weekdays. She would show up half the time and make an excuse for something.
Then, after she had been going there for three months, I saw her at Costco with a cart full of “goodies”: a Sony play station, a set of curtains, a big tray of uncooked shrimp, a large plant and some DVDs.
It took every ounce of Christian decency that I had at the time, to not blow up in her face and confront her for the fraudulant leach that she was.
Everything loosened up after Vatican II. That was a big mistake, for which the Church has yet to adjust. I prefer Mass in Latin, but English will suffice. At least in Latin, everyone is on the same page, no matter what native tongue they speak.
Besides, during the Mass, there are Prayers and Hymns that are offered in Latin, now, since John Paul II pronouncements on that, so it is wondeful to hear, again.
My wife and I went to Mass this past Sunday. We went to another Church, since we got in late on Saturday night, early Sunday morning, and had missed Mass at our Church.
Well, we took a drive with our children, and was near a Church roughly 30 minutes from us, and decided that we would go to St. Matthew’s Church, instead of going another half an hour to St. Ann’s.
I saw a few Indian families going into the Church, from the parking lot, but that is not too surprising, since many have moved into this area, in the last 15 years.
My wife and children took seats in the last pew, and waited, since Mass was to start at 5:00 p.m. More and more East Indians arrived, and started filling up the pews in front of us.
We looked at each other, and sat there, waiting to see if anyone else from this Neighborhood would arrive for Mass. Then, the Priest came out and went to the Alter. He was Indian, as well.
There was some chanting that started, as the Priest and Alter Service lit the candles, and it was in Hindi. Clearly, my family and I would not totally understand what is going on, here, even though a Catholic Mass is the same, all over the world.
I have attended my Church, at Midnight Mass, for Christmas, and one year, they said it in Polish, for the predominately Polish people in our Parish. At least there, we could follow along, and I knew people who could translate, if needed.
The rythmes of the prayers don’t change. The “Lord’s Prayer” is still said the same way, but in Polish. But still, we were uncomfortable at St. Matthew’s. It was just something that we never experienced before. I never felt like a stranger in any Church that I attended, no matter where I had been, until now.
So, we stood and Blessed ourselves, and left before Mass began.
It is my opinion that Vatican II changed the Catholic church in more ways than one. The Tridentine mass (which is in latin) was universally understood wherever one went anywhere in the world. Untill recently,it was banned. Also, the concept of the priest facing the congegration flies in the face of traditionalism. The priest facing the same way (back to the congegration) was a way of showing that the priest was the congegration’s representative to the Creator. With the priest facing the congegration, he is more like an “actor” than a representative of the people.
All the U.S. Archdioceses are trying to save money by closing churches and selling the properties — mostly to pay for the peccadillos of the pedophile clergy. I’m Catholic myself, and our local church has sizeable congregations of whites, Latinos, and VietNamese. They all have their own worship services. Blacks get a day to have their own special Masses. I don’t like any of it, quite frankly. Is this supposed to be what diversity means? To me it seems like all it does is separate the entire parish into various racial and cultural factions. They come together once a year at the annual Fiesta, and there they all have their own respective ethnic food booths. But I really don’t see a whole lot of diversity in the English masses I attend. The Hispanics go to Spanish Mass and the Viet Namese go to their own language Mass (yes, there’s a Viet Namese priest and a couple of priests who speak Spanish). To me this is just retaining the old identities of these cultures. I don’t see it as real diversity, where everyone worships and works together. I don’t think the various national groups WANT to assimilate into this country, and I find that offensive. I also find it offensive that the Church supports that kind of divisiveness. As for the Southern ethnic churches closing, it’s about MONEY, not about their ethnicity. The people have to suffer because of the hideous actions of a few of their clergy. It isn’t fair to anyone.
Lack of financial support from the community is the main reason black and Hispanic Catholic churches close. Somehow, poor yet highly faithful Polish and Lithuanian iron-workers were willing to tithe themselves is small Midwestern mill towns a century ago to build houses of worship and religious schools. As a California Catholic I’d like to bear witness to the fact that, in our time, the new and old minorities put next to nothing in the collection plate. They certainly don’t contribute anything near a tenth of what they earn to their local church, and their attendance is spotty at best. Mostly, the men don’t attend at all, and the women, when they do, show up suitably attired for a strip club or a day at the beach. I’m sorry, but such people will be a cinch for Islam to convert. I don’t blame the Catholic Church for closing churches where the parishioners are lax, deadbeat, theological ignoramuses, whose descendants will be fodder for Islamic conversion in the next 100 years, anyway.
