A poorer parish
I have a friend who is looking for a job as a fundraising executive. She has years of experience and a proven track record in the not-for-profit field. While reading our diocesan newspaper, I spotted a job listing I thought she’d be interested in.
A parish in our diocese is looking for a Director of Institutional Advancement, which seems to mean someone who will be in charge of finding ways to bring more money in. That particular parish seems to be better off than most neighborhood churches and it’s in a more tony area of Tampa–hence the need for someone like my friend.
I don’t begrudge parishes the right to grow or to serve more of the faithful, but I can’t say that the ad didn’t remind me why my husband and I left our former parish to transfer to another farther away. Kevin and I are always searching for a poorer parish to worship in and we haven’t found it yet.
Our former parish had a food program that gave us the opportunity to volunteer with our two oldest children one day a month. We used to sort, bag and distribute groceries to people who sometimes couldn’t cover the modest cost of the monthly distribution; some used to get their allotment free through donations from the parish’s Society of St. Vincent de Paul. One Saturday a month, we worked hard and saw older folks on fixed incomes and young mothers working minimum wage jobs smile when they received their groceries.
Our old parish balked at continuing to cover the cost of a truck rental to bring the food back from a warehouse in Tampa and the food distribution program ended. Yet, that Christmas, a $6,000 Fontanini Nativity set was on display near the consecrated altar and a full-court press to fund the construction of an entertainment building for banquets and dances was under way.
I thought of a young redheaded woman in our parish who worked at a local supermarket and was raising a toddler on her own. I used to see her at the checkout line while grocery shopping and, once a month, I’d see her again with her little girl on one hip and the food allotment from our church on the other as she walked out with food for the week. I don’t think the Fontanini set would do anything to put food in her baby’s stomach. The Catholic Worker in me hates church excess when her people are hungry.
In protest, Kevin and I left the parish that was down the street from our house and transferred to a smaller one farther away. Since we left our former parish, there’s been construction, beautification, anniversary galas and even a scandal involving a staff member accused of sexual malfeasance. Now and then, we attend a teen Mass there or visit their oratory, but I never really feel comfortable.
Today, Kevin visited our old parish as part of his bike ride for exercise. He came home with a velveteen pouch filled with gold-foil chocolate coins imprinted with the parish’s name. They were on sale at the church’s gift shop for $3 each, he said. I don’t think we’ll eat them; they’ll leave a bitter taste in our mouths.
We moved to another parish that is less pretentious, which suits us fine, but we’re still searching for a poorer church. There are farmworker missions in the next county and there are older churches in Tampa and St. Petersburg where we would feel more at home, but it’s always tempting on a Sunday morning to conserve gas and worship near our house. We are not giving up our search for a poorer parish, though.
We’re looking for a parish where the poor are welcomed and fed, where the undocumented can seek refuge, where the U.S. Bishops’ message that we should end the death penalty is preached, where Dorothy Day Center is located on the grounds of the church instead of a banquet hall, where my husband’s 1988 station wagon isn’t woefully out of place in the parking lot amid the new SUVs, where minorities are not stared at.
We’re looking for a parish where the people in the pews would be disgusted if gold-foil chocolates and $6,000 Nativity sets were associated with the place where their bread and wine are transformed by God into his Body and Blood. We’re looking for the Church founded by Jesus Christ to bring glad tidings to the poor, as He preached in Luke 4:18 while reading from Isaiah 61:1-2.
Our parish is out there somewhere and it won’t have a professional fundraiser on staff or its name on chocolate coins. It will have Christ and that will be enough.
