From the Times-Union: Faith tinged with anger: Parishioners mourn as two churches in Watervliet celebrate their final Masses

Nationality defined Immaculate Conception, too. The church traces its roots to 1908, when Bishop Thomas Burke granted the Polish immigrant community permission to organize a parish and worship in their native language [not true – Latin was standard].

Much of that world no longer exists, as Razzano pointed out during a walk around his old neighborhood: The Polish-owned White Eagle Bakery; the Morelli Brothers Italian specialty shop across from Mount Carmel; the toothbrush factory. Every one — and much more — is gone.

True.

But the church remained a spoke that connected families to each other and to their shared past, a connection you could feel Sunday in the sobs of a 15-year-old girl.

Also true —“ the center of communal life —“ who’d of thought —“ a church?

Emily McFeeters, seated in an oak pew between her mother and grandmother, dabbed her eyes before the 9 a.m. Mass began.

“I was supposed to get married here,” she said. “My kids were supposed to be baptized in this church. I’m the last generation. I know it’s a little ridiculous to cry. But it means a lot to me.”

Emily had her eye on the future, a future that included the Church, centered on Christ. Will she ‘adapt’ or will she be lost? May God have mercy on her and her family —“ I feel for them because I’ve experienced it.

When decisions like this are made (read imposed) apart from the people (all the people – not just appointed yes men and women) there are real casualties. I image that if they asked Emily she could have developed a hundred strategies that would have allowed the parish to remain active and open. That’s what those without stilted thinking do, they imagine solutions outside the ‘norm.’

Sure, big ‘C’ Church is more than the local parish, but the local parish is where the rubber hits the road. The local parish is the place where the realities of life are lived, the continuum of communion is realized.

The folks in Toledo, who finally came over to the PNCC, made a pilgrimage through three R.C. parishes, each closed in succession, before they saw the reality.

The reality is that the top down ‘pontifical’ culture of the R.C. Church has separated the shepherds from the flock. The bishop does not know this girl, her life, or her hopes. Maybe the local pastor did, but the pastor in the new and improved mega-church (one parish, three locations, yada, yada, yada) won’t be all that connected.

The reality is that R.C. clerical culture is undemocratic and distant. The R.C. Church in the United States has a culture predominantly developed under the heresy of Americanism which ingrained itself in a hierarchical structure that ‘knows what’s best for you.’ (Note: the wiki article only covers the surface elements of the problem; see The Phantom Heresy? by Aaron J. Massey for a fuller exposition —“ and notice the seeds of today’s Am-Church problems).

In an extensive article on the American Catholic Church, The American Catholic Church, Assessing the Past, Discerning the Future, Anthony Padovano* states:

The second letter, Testem Benevolentiae (1899) took direct aim at American Catholic culture…

The encyclical condemns … “Americanism,” a general tendency to suppose that the “Church in America” can be “different from” the rest of the world.

Cardinal James Gibbons objects to the encyclical in a sharp letter to the Pope on March 17, 1899.

If one looks carefully at the encyclical letter Testem Benevolentiae, the five criticisms of Leo XIII go to the heart of American culture. He dislikes, as we have noted: change, free speech, conscience, pragmatism and initiative.

The submissiveness De Tocqueville observed and the Roman critique of America advanced even further because of the massive influx of immigrants. The immigrants were less adept with the American system. They did not, for the most part, have English as a native language; as Catholics, they cared less about an active voice in governing their Church than in surviving. A ready group of bishops moved in a sternly conservative direction, with Roman support.

The Roman Phase [1850-1960] stresses submissiveness, the papal critique of America and service to the immigrant community. In fairness, it must be noted that many conservative and even repressive bishops organized assistance for Catholic immigrants that was often healing and life-saving. A great deal of social justice work was expended on behalf of vulnerable and frightened immigrants. But these bishops, in turn, and many priests, insisted on absolute power and total obedience. They were brilliant organizers but also men of narrow theological vision. They tended to be belligerent, more impressive in conflict than in their capacity to reconcile.

John Hughes, Archbishop of New York, is typical. He dismantles the trustee system in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, boasting, “I made war on the whole system.” He added that “Catholics did their duty when they obeyed their bishop.” Even more ominously, he warns: “I will suffer no man in my diocese that I cannot control.”

Rome kept up the pressure. In Vehementer Nos, Pius X writes: “the one duty of the multitude is to allow themselves to be led and, like a docile flock, to follow their pastors”

The problem is that the ‘Roman Phase’ never ended. The window dressing, a result of Vatican II, has changed, but the underlying model of pray, pay, and obey remains.

In addition to the above, the American R.C. Church was built on the leadership of many clergy, shipped to the United States, because they had —problems— at home. While the true malcontents and problems stood out, the recent scandals point out that a lot remained hidden and suppressed.

In International Priests: New Ministers in the Catholic Church in the United States by Dean R. Hoge and Aniedi Okure, O.P. synopsized in International Priests in American History the authors’ state:

European bishops sometimes viewed America as a kind of Australia for wayward priests, a dumping ground for clergy of the lowest quality.

These two issues have combined into a clerical culture, which at its heart, is control based and influenced by the dysfunctional.

The bottom line is that people will do one of two things, they will simply stop going to church, or they will trot over to the next nearest R.C. parish, but remain apart from the community (at least for a couple years). This is the expected and time tested response, closing protests in Boston being the anomaly.

The disaffected in Watervliet (especially the Poles) will head over to St. Michael’s in Cohoes. There they will await the next closing under an immigrant pastor from Poland who was quickly installed and promoted after ordination in the Albany Diocese (that raises questions in my mind —“ aren’t there more senior priests awaiting parishes, why the special treatment).

Of course they could all attend the nearest PNCC parish in Latham or Schenectady —“ but it is a swim few will make.

Perhaps they would if they understood that they actually do get a voice and a vote in the management of the parish, that no one will close their parish without each person’s input (that’s why you never hear protests when PNCC parishes merge or move —“ the people decide for themselves).

Perhaps they are not used to a pastor who knows them individually? Perhaps their faith is dependent upon the pope? Perhaps, being treated as human beings, with thoughts, opinions, ideas, and the Constitutionally protected right to express such is too foreign? Perhaps the mentality of pray, pay, and obey is too deeply ingrained? Perhaps it is easier to stay home on Sunday?

For whatever reason, it is just sad, and I pray for these people, for all the Emily McFeeters who’s walk down the aisle will be something other than expected. We are here for you, follow Jesus’ direction to ‘come and see.’

*The conclusions of Mr. Padano’s article are suspect and carry a certain political agenda, but he raises valid historical points.