Eric Banecker
This past weekend, I led a group of about 15 new men to St. Charles Seminary on a walking tour of historic Philadelphia. We stopped at some of the major points of religious and secular history: Old St. Joseph’s Church, at one time the only place in the entire British Empire where Mass could be celebrated publicly; Carpenter’s Hall, the site of the first Continental Congress; Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were signed; and the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul (for the record, lunch was at the Reading Terminal Market).
In both areas — secular and religious — Philadelphia has a proud legacy, and as a native, I am always happy to ferry newcomers around. Our history is a treasure, and it deserves to be valued.
But it is also a terrible burden, and it must not be allowed to become an albatross.
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That’s because the men and women walking around Old City dressed like Betsy Ross and Ben Franklin can lull us into forgetting our own responsibilities to history. This is not Disneyland. The great American Experiment is not merely an interesting set piece for a museum, but a living government to be preserved.
The real Benjamin Franklin spoke wisely when, in response to the question as to what kind of government the Constitutional Congress had created, he said, “a republic, madam, if you can keep it.”
The tendency to surrender our senses to nostalgia is not just an American problem. Catholics face the same temptation. Our Church has a venerable tradition of scholars, pastors, and holy men and women. We stand on their shoulders. To ignore the insights of Aquinas would be utter foolishness. To look at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and not stand in awe of its grandeur would be ridiculous.
But we must never forget this: if Aquinas wanted merely to venerate the past, he never would have written the Summa. If the builders of Notre Dame wanted to stick to what had been done before, they would have built something a bit less impressive. We do not worship the past; we worship God alone! Anything else is idolatry.
Last week, I was at a cook-out with some friends. Most of them are regular churchgoers, trying their best to maintain their relationship with the Church, even if they don’t always appreciate the fullness of her teachings.
One friend talked about how when he was growing up people identified with their parishes in his neighborhood of the city. Church buildings dotted the landscape like spired mountain ranges, and family identity was closely linked with that ubiquitous Philadelphia question, “What parish are you from?”
But I pointed out to my friend that even 20 years ago when we were in elementary school, that culture was dying out. While things looked fine on the surface, anyone paying attention could see that fewer and fewer “school families” actually continued attending church on Sundays after confirmation. Baptisms and weddings decreased. The vibrancy of those parishes in the first three-quarters of the 20th century was giving way to a new reality: decline.
The reasons why this happened are so complex that it would honestly take years of research. But the fact is that here we are. As much as Southwest Philadelphia in the 1950s seems to many to be Shangri-La for Catholicism, it is no longer 1950. So, what are we going to do for Southwest Philadelphia today? This is the question we must ask ourselves.
And this is not just a local problem. Though Philadelphia and other major cities have challenges unique to their situations, all Catholics in the United States have to re-evaluate their paradigms of what it means to be Catholic.
Yes, it seems that we are headed into (or, perhaps, already are) in a period of pressure on the Church here. To predict the future is foolish, but I am confident in saying this: being Catholic in the next 50 years will require a much greater degree of commitment than in the previous 50. And in all honesty, we probably shouldn’t look at that as a bad thing.
Of course, we all would love to live in an era when we can be totally free to practice our faith. But this is the time God has chosen for us to be saints; to desire something else amounts to ungratefulness!
We cannot worship history, but neither can we ignore its lessons. Did not the dynamism of 20th century Catholicism here spring from the experience of the Church in the 19th? That was the era of Know-Nothings throwing bricks and fireballs through the windows of churches! And yet, in the crucible of intense pressure, a thriving community was born.
In the end, history does not belong to the lukewarm, but to the saints. These are people like St. John Neumann and St. Katharine Drexel, not to mention the countless anonymous faithful men and women of the past and present.
When Carpenter’s Hall and, yes, even Notre Dame Cathedral is reduced to rubble, it is their lives which will be revealed as the true triumphs of history. And in God’s eternal present, there is no need for nostalgia.
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Eric Banecker is a seminarian at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary and a contributor to the seminary’s blog, Seminarian Casual, on which this post first appeared.
I believe the writer stated “celebrated publicly”
God bless
Pope Benedict XVI left as one of his many legacies a plea for Catholics to study the early Church, especially the Church Fathers and Doctors. It explains who we are and why.
Excellent article; you point to the fact that the Roman Catholic Church is in serious trouble in the U.S., but not as bad yet as Europe. People will have to decide very soon where they stand because choices will be forced upon us in the near future (already have been for some.)
Perhaps he meant it in the plain meaning, suchlike as I took it….the only place in the British Empire where there was an open and public Mass where anyone could attend, and not some secret, hidden, private, fearful thing?
I see what you’ve done here. However, what Catholics once were we still are now.
A few points. 1) you say, “dying out”. I say, “run over with a bulldozer.” 2) A church building should be built with durability in mind. One’s obligation to offer due worship and adoration to the Holy and Undivided Trinity does not end regardless of the circumstances. 3) Just because church buildings can become underused and nonviable and populations can be set in disruptive motion with enough economic engineering doesn’t mean that the rite these buildings were formed to house and the people were wisely habituated to use can be rendered nonviable and subject to replacement. 4) The “years of research” have already been done. Like it or lump it, Prof. E. Michael Jones has penned the account in his “Slaughter of Cites.”
The often called ancient, old, or venerable mass of all ages is, in fact eternal. Therefore it is not idolatry, to employ it. Oh, sorry, an “albatross”.
Great piece and I hear you. I grew up in Germantown, the now closed Immaculate Conception Church and School are my foundations in faith. The IHM’s and Vincentians gave me a solid base, so much so that I am involved in ministry today as a lay person, working in the Archdiocese of Baltimore. It breaks my heart to hear of a church in any denomination needing to close, not so much due to lack of attendance but primarily due to lack of imagination. We keep God locked in the tradition box when our lives tell us God is constantly out and about, inspiring and leading, yet we fear to listen as it might lead us outside the box. What will it take to let the Spirit really loose in our churches and congregations to make them strong again in living faith and not just maintaining facilities. Then Archbishop, now Cardinal O’Brien, when he was archbishop on Baltimore hit the head on the nail when he said, slight paraphrase here, “we have done a wonderful job educating people in the facts about their faith and the church, but we somehow failed to bring them to an experience of that faith and an encounter with the Lord Jesus so that their faith took root.” I am so grateful that my faith has taken root and I pray daily that we can be a church that is much more concerned about inviting the faithful to be dynamic and intentional disciples than worrying about brick and mortar to gauge the success of a parish. The Spirit is leading us if we put listen.
“even if they don’t always appreciate the fullness of her teachings.”
And right there is the problem. The tendency, since the ‘spirit’ of Vatican II, to separate Jesus from His Church, the Catholic Church. That was and is the intention of protestantism and it comes in handy for liberal ‘catholics’. So when one dissents from a teaching of Jesus they look to protestantism and that teaching becomes a ‘church teaching’ so as to justify their disobedience.
If one laments the sale of Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary or the site of Saint Katherine Drexel Shrine has he succumbed to the “albatross of nostalgia?”
It is simply not true that Saint Joseph’s Church was the only place where Catholic Mass could be said in the British Empire. There were all the embassy chapels of Catholic countries- most famous being the Portuguese and Spanish chapels in London. And the separate courts of consorts of Stuart kings had their own chapels and Masses.
St. Joseph’s church “the only place in the British Empire where Mass could be celebrated?” Not true. Throughout the Empire, Mass could be celebrated in the chapels of embassies of officially Catholic countries. Fsmous examples were the Portuguese and Spanish chapels in London which, among other thingd,were creative centers of liturgical music. – And of course the Catholic queens of Stuart kings had their own courts with s large number of Catholic priests – most famously the court of the queen consort of Cahres I.
And the Church must be forever building, and always decaying,
…..and always being restored.
For every ill deed in the past we suffer the consequence:
For sloth, for avarice, gluttony, neglect of the Word of God,
For pride, for lechery, treachery, for every act of sin.
And of all that was done that was good, you have the inheritance.
For good and ill deeds belong to a man alone, when he stands
…..alone on the other side of death,
But here upon earth you have the reward of the good and ill that
…..was done by those who have gone before you.
And all that is ill you may repair if you walk together in humble
…..repentance, expiating the sins of your fathers;
And all that was good you must fight to keep with hearts as
…..devoted as those of your fathers who fought to gain it.
The Church must be forever building, for it is forever decaying
…..within and attacked from without;
For this is the law of life; and you must remember that while
…..there is time of prosperity
The people will neglect the Temple, and in time of adversity
…..they will decry it.
~T. S. Eliot, “Choruses from ‘The Rock’” (1934)
Greetings Eric,
This is a very interesting article. It’s interesting because you encourage the reader not make an idol of the past. Here’s my question though; is there error in looking back to a time when our parishes were thriving (as opposed to the varying stages of decline they’re mostly in today) and wondering what the difference is? Here’s what I observe in my area (which happens to be on the other side of the country from you); the three parishes where the extraordinary form is offered are growing, with two of the three in fact having a very hard time keeping up with the demand. The Masses are profoundly Christ-centered and the homilies offer the fullness of doctrine and dogma, compelling articulated. The families are large and the vocations abundant. One can surmise from this that these parishes are sacramental powerhouses, and a great deal of grace flowing into the lives of these faithful as a result. By comparison, nothing like this is to be found in any of the neighboring ordinary form parishes. This diocese’s seminary is kept open only because of “loaner” seminarians from the neighboring archdiocese. Occam’s Razor posits that, all things being equal, the simplest explanation is likely the most accurate (or something like that): maybe its time for the “old” Mass and the “old ways” of doing things to be revisited. Though a highly imperfect metaphor, when Coca-Cola execs realized that people were staying away from the New Coke in droves, they went ahead and rebranded the old formula “Coke Classic” and let customer purchase decisions take their course, and New Coke is now nothing more than a case study in business marketing classes. In our case a lot of the “execs” (our Bishops) are saying the problem with the “New Coke” is that its not “New Coke-y” enough.
My best for your vocation Eric.
Pax Christi. – Andrew
Insightful and well written. This article should be published in Church bulletins throughout the Archdiocese.
Thank you for such insight. As a frequent visitor to the Cathedral, I am often saddened by the lack of respect for the building itself, which can also manifest into a lack of respect for God while there for mass or a visit. The building needs a thorough cleaning; it needs adequate restrooms, it needs to feel the love and respect it deserves. While in the past, these needs may have been overlooked by visitors, today’s visitors must be “wooed” to see the wonders of our archdiocese. God bless you.