Jennifer Davis, 34, of Milwaukee, who was raised a Southern Baptist, joined St. Paul’s four years ago after receiving a warm welcome while helping with the wedding preparations of a sister who is a member.
“I felt welcome from the time that I walked in the door, and that was a completely different feeling,” said Davis, who likes the church’s outreach to the needy. “I like that we’re taught directly out of the Book of Common Prayer, versus someone just putting it all in their own words.”
Mary Ellen Hermann, 47, of Greendale was content in the Catholic faith of her childhood until she attended an Episcopal service with a friend while working in San Francisco. Now remarried, she was then a divorced mother with three children. The Episcopal priest, a woman, also had been a divorced mother of three.
“Somehow, she got my number, and she called and paid a visit,” Hermann said. “Within minutes, she was helping organize baby-sitting for me and really giving me a great cheerleading experience, that I could do this and everything would be fine.”
At the time, the pastor of her Catholic parish had just told her that she couldn’t walk down the aisle with her daughter for the girl’s First Communion, because she was a single mother and he wanted to emphasize the Catholic Year of the Family.
“All of sudden I found myself going to that other church,” said Hermann. “I just stayed with it because it just fit.”
At the time, the pastor of her Catholic parish had just told her that she couldn’t walk down the aisle with her daughter for the girl’s First Communion, because she was a single mother and he wanted to emphasize the Catholic Year of the Family.
In other news: baby Jesus couldn’t be confirmed because his mother’s pregnancy set a bad example for the other young women of the town.
It will be better for these if a millstone is tied around their neck…
Nobody “walks down the aisle” with their kids during a First Communion mass. Something not right about that story.
It is so rare that within a single document we can be treated to everything that is wrong with our Church at the same time. The amazing thing is as a man of 26 I would have read this document as a delightful piece, and probably sought out St. Paul’s. Now that I’ve lived into the truth at 46, I am amazed how twisted it looks to me.
[blockquote] The church’s current rector, Father Steve Teague, 57, was ordained a Southern Baptist minister at 23. He decided about 10 years ago with his wife, Karen, that the Episcopal Church was a better fit. St. Paul’s, 914 E. Knapp St., may be exceptional. But fluidity is common in today’s consumer culture, where adults often shop for a new faith and congregation. A recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that 44% of American adults have switched religious affiliations, or moved to or from no faith affiliation.[/blockquote]
It’s salvation through marketing. We must admit, in the short run, Jesus was a very poor marketer by our standards. I was struck in my reading of his prayer for the disciples in John’s gospel this morning “I pray to you Father, not for the whole world, but for only these whom you have given me, that you remember they are yours.” Forget the MDG, we have a job to do right here, but what if our calling is not a good “fit”? Who’s “fit” exactly will match up with “Deny thyself, take up thy cross, and follow me”? Nobody.
[blockquote] “I came into the Episcopal Church while a college student, having grown up as a Lutheran,” Miller said. “I have found . . . a church faithful to Holy Scripture and tradition that is not afraid to wrestle with the hard questions, and a community united by common prayer and a generous orthodoxy that allows for differences of opinion rather than demanding a rigid conformity. [/blockquote]
I can fathom only two possibilities for this response: 1. She was confused, and attended the wrong church, or 2. She has no idea what “faithful to Holy Scripture” means and has never read or studied the Bible. Certainly she has not been exposed to enough Church tradition to make that connection. This saddens me greatly. It reminds me of the survey taken in England last month which confirmed that 27% of all adults aged 18-30 believe that Winston Churchill did not exist, that he was a mythical creation who never really lived.
[blockquote] At the time, the pastor of her Catholic parish had just told her that she couldn’t walk down the aisle with her daughter for the girl’s First Communion, because she was a single mother and he wanted to emphasize the Catholic Year of the Family. [/blockquote] I found this stunning in its cruelty and a clear argument against a celibate, princely priesthood, if true.
[blockquote] Bill Stotts, 52, of Milwaukee, and his partner, Richard Runkel, 55, who was raised Catholic, came to St. Paul’s two years ago after exploring Episcopal, Catholic and Presbyterian churches. [/blockquote]
Well, they got the core message out in this article: We don’t judge you, we ask nothing of you, we let you define your own faith and practice it in our pretty church with our pretty services and SING, come on, SING. Isn’t this nice?
[blockquote] The Episcopal Church, and St. Paul’s, offered “a great balance of liturgy and logic,” he said. [/blockquote] Not to put too fine a point on it, but is logic necessarily Salvific? I’ve never read anything in Scripture like “Blessed are the Logical”, or “By their logic you shall know them” or “No one comes to the Father except through Logic”. If I may quote Mr. Spock (I wont’ do it again, I promise) “Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not its completion.”
KTF!!!! Come on….KTF!!!!….mrb
Forget the MDG, we have a job to do right here, but what if our calling is not a good “fit”? Who’s “fit” exactly will match up with “Deny thyself, take up thy cross, and follow me”? Nobody.
I’m incredibly skeptical of members who claim that those who visit a church should “just suck it up,” or “carry their cross,” or some statement. No, as parishioners and mature believers, that is what WE should be doing. St Paul went out of his way to “market” himself to the lost. He was all things to all men, a Roman to the Romans, a Jew to the Jews, and a hippy to the hippies. Churches that let anything (tradition, attitudes, culture) stand in the way of newcomers coming into contact with the living Christ are out of line and a hindrance to the gospel.
And of course I’m not anti-tradition, anti-dogma, or anti-anything-else. Different strokes for different folks, or course. I just think that we like to pretend that our own cliqueyness and pride are the Stumbling Block incarnate. That’s almost never the case.
The diocese of Milwaukee has declined a whopping 18.1% in the past five years. See the graph [url=http://12.0.101.92/reports/PR_ChartsDemo/exports/ParishRPT_325200811030PM.pdf ]here[/url]. St Paul’s in Milwaukee graph is [url=http://12.0.101.92/reports/PR_ChartsDemo/exports/ParishRPT_325200811607PM.pdf ]here[/url]. The plate/pledge income is going up and up.
I agree with Catholic Mom. This is a typical anti-Catholic put down and I suspect there is something more to this incident.
Br. Michael,
The world is a big place and there are all kinds of people out there who do all kinds of awful things. So I absolutely never say never. But, as I say to my kids, when you hear one side of a story, there’s usually another side somewhere waiting to be heard.
There was a woman who was getting huge publicity about a year ago telling the media how her child couldn’t make her First Communion because she had a condition that made it life-threatening for her to consume gluten and her diocese absolutely refused to let the poor child receive a gluten-free host. She had appealed to Rome and been turned down. Turns out that 1) the diocese had offered a host that was so low in gluten as to be close to non-existant, 2) the diocese had pointed out that receiving communion in one kind is as valid as receiving in both kinds; therefore there was no reason for her to consume the host at all since she could receive the wine, and 3) her husband had separated from her saying she was a publicity seeking nut.
Could the woman in this article have been humiliated by her pastor? Absolutely — it could have happened. Was she? Hard to know. There are plenty of single/divorced/unmarried parents out there who participate in their kids’ baptisms or First Communions, or confirmations, or weddings every day. I’d like to hear the pastor’s side of the story. 🙂
I, for one, was encouraged by this story, though I do hope we can offer more than “liturgy and logic” to our communities.
I find it fascinating that a church that was involved in a split over 100 years ago with its almost next-door neighbor Cathedral (one block south) over style of worship (low church vs high church) is now working to bring people from all parts of life together in worship.
It is also good to see how the parish seems to be reinventing itself and beginning to grow again in the face of the demographics of the neighborhood. The elementary school across the street has a sizeable portion of homeless children from the neighborhood to the north and west, while just a few blocks away to the east hi-rise condos sell for a cool half million or more. To keep a church united and going in the face of those demographics requires a committment to the life-changing power of the Gospel at some point.
Catholic Mom,
I’m with you. I’d like to hear the pastor’s side. What I do know, a priori, is this is typical Catholic bashing by media.
yes mike. hence the name – Mr. Paul’s.
Writing a little more so I’m not in trouble for leaving a one liner.
🙂
Of true stories of high-handedly cruel Catholic pastors, there is no end. Busybody meddlesome gossips in the parish, usually, but not always women, are even worse. I can easily believe that a single mother would be treated with sneering contempt by priests and catty women. However, Catholic Mom has it right – mothers don’t walk down the aisle with their daughters in First Communion processions, so her complaint makes no sense whatsoever.