"About two years ago, we decided we wanted more encounters with people from here and (St. John Vianney)," said Diaz [German Diaz, Prince of Peace's director of religious education]. "My goal was to build a relationship and do some work. Sometimes people send a check and think that's helping; we want them to get involved here, that's what changes minds and hearts.
I'll take his critique of sending checks seriously if one is ever returned uncashed. From what I've seen in Guatemala, he has a point about personal contact changing minds and hearts, though one might be careful not to presume exactly what the change will be.
"We have camps where we send people away to Mexico and we have a need here," he continued. "Why not make this place beautiful? People go to Mexico to change the world; why not change the world here?"
If kids from Prince of Peace in turn visit and work at St. John Vianney, I don't see it in this story.
Update: Author Dave Goetz gives spiritual counsel.
The basic premise of Death by Suburb is that while the suburban environment may at times be toxic to your faith, the answer isn’t to flee. The answer is to stay. The answer is to figure it out. To build into your life the key spiritual practices that help us stay awake to the work of God in this world.The alternative, I guess, is to say that to experience the fullness of God, you need either to move to the country where the pressures appear to be less or move to another place that may be more friendly to faith. For those who can afford it, that’s an option: You can either buy a second home in the rural or move there permanently.
Arise, fellow-suburbanites, and buy that second home in the country, that ye may experience the fullness of God!
(via Sprawled Out)
...ahhh....that last line is FAR too ripe to touch...
ReplyDeleteSt. John Vianney is beyond the edge of the earth in the Unknown Lands --- the transit doesn't go there. Generally, people don't drive in this neighborhood, and some of those who do drive oughtn't to be for lack of licence or lack of insurance......
ReplyDeleteRemember, for us unwealthy city-dwellers, the world may as well end at 124th Street; the Sears Tower in Chicago is closer and easier to get to (1 bus, 1 train, 1 block walk) than Waukesha Expo (weekday daytime only, minimum four transfers in two bus systems, the last I checked)!
Gosh, Karen Marie, you seem to have detected a Suburbanites Seeing The Poor In Their Natural Habitat undertone in the Catholic Herald story.
ReplyDeleteIf it were a matter of transportation, Prince of Peace could charter a bus. If that strained its budget, St. John Vianney could pay for it.
Maybe a return visit is in the works. But if it is, I would think it would be mentioned.
I visited St. John Vianney on August 6 for the first time in 20 years. Bad News: they used "Sing a New Church" as a processional. Good News: They were no longer using illicit-possibly-invalid Chunky Bread for the Eucharist, and even had a note in the bulletin about using only pyxes for taking Communion to the sick and homebound.
ReplyDeleteI do have to admit, the observation of suburb dwellers in their natural habitat does sound like it might be iteresting --- especially their lack of basic infrastructure and ordinary amenities. No transit! No sidewalks! In some areas, no fire hydrants, leech beds and septic tanks and well water.......
ReplyDeleteSo instead of stopping at St. John Vianney, maybe it should just be a guided bus tour of Brookfield? Here's some music; it's in stereotype.
ReplyDeleteMy father was a founding member of St John's, and the attorney-of-record during the process. Needless to say, until the mid-'60's we were quite active there.
ReplyDeleteI've only been inside the buildings 5 times in the last 40 years or so...most memorably to meet Abp. Dolan on his initial tour of the Archdiocese.
Can't abide their quasi-Methodist "Masses."
Don't worry, Terrence, I have some firsthand experience of no-fire-hydrants, no-sidewalks, septic tanks, sandy well water, automobile dependency, and so on; my formative early-childhood years were spent in a semi-rural (at the time, it's all subdivisions now!)Ohio suburb called Copley Township.
ReplyDeleteWe didn't move to the great city Akron till I was 12. One of my special tasks was to make sure, when extended family came to visit, that no one parked their cars on the leech bed or over the septic tank.
I'm seeing that kind of development in my suburb. It's rare now to see anyone riding horseback along the roads, and it's been years since the first big snowfall got the neighbors out snowmobiling through our subdivision.
ReplyDeleteBut the city changes, too. You likely were never down by Schuster's.