The parishioners in my parish have changed dramatically over the past seven years. Seven years ago, orthodox Catholics were hard to find. The few of us there were clung together in sometimes conspicuous groupings.
That’s not to say our parish was a hotbed of heresy; it wasn’t. It’s just that most folks were poorly catechized. They wanted to be faithful Catholics. When people heard that I had a deeper-than-average knowledge of the faith (just because I read a lot), I started getting phone calls. “Kathy, why do we pray to saints?” “Do we still believe in purgatory?” “Can you explain the Real Presence?” I was happy to answer them as best I could.
Sometimes I offered my knowledge unsolicited, which was my obnoxious side coming out. I can remember trying to tell some people in a restaurant that yes, you had to be Catholic to be saved and when I got an objection, I tried to explain some of the nuances of justification that would allow for an apparent non-Catholic to be saved, while preserving the teaching of “no salvation outside the Church.” It was a little difficult to do on the run while their pancakes were getting cold. I could see the look of that-woman-is-crazy on their faces.
Seven years later, every time I turn around, I’m seeing expressions of a “new springtime” in the Church. Just the other day, I went to a children’s First Communion party and the young man at the next table, who looked like his first concern would be a baseball game, was expounding on the Septuagint. Now I have people lecturing me on Church history, doctrine, liturgy… Don’t they know I’m a Catholic part-time professional? Vanity. It falls so hard.
But it is actually such a kick and a joy to see all these on-fire Catholics in my parish. They remind me so much of the young evangelical Protestants I knew in my younger days.
I have a theory about why our parish has changed: a good priest. No, he isn’t a Father Corapi who whipped us into shape with his brilliant lectures on the Catechism. Father Dan is more of an ordinary priest and one with whom I sometimes disagree. But he is a holy priest and the one thing he did (out of the many things he does daily) was that he let us open an adoration chapel January 1, 2000.
The actual opening of the chapel was an amazing moment. On December 31, 1999 at 11:00PM, Father Dan began Mass in the church. When he got to the consecration, it must have been very close to midnight, for as he held up the consecrated Host for worship, firecrackers and celebration were heard outside. He held the Host up for a particularly long time as we were all in awe of the timing. After Mass, the Blessed Sacrament was installed in the chapel and our 24-hour perpetual adoration commenced, as Father said, “to continue until Christ comes again.”
Running a chapel is not easy and there were problems. Many people didn’t know what the devotion was about. As I was the coordinator for running the chapel, I fielded lots and lots of questions.
About a year after opening the chapel, and, I believe, as a direct result of having the chapel in our community, Catholic radio came to town. Now we’re just a small town in central California. Catholic radio could have gone to any number of towns. But we had the first perpetual adoration chapel in the area, and I believe that’s why we first got the radio station, Immaculate Heart Radio.
And Catholic radio has made all the difference. People listen to the radio and they learn their faith. They really learn their faith well, too. Sometimes I walk into the chapel and it is filled with people reading their Bibles and praying. Today, it is very, very rare for anyone to ask me what adoration is all about. And daily Mass attendance has gone from about 20 “senior” folks to over 100. During Lent, it’s over 200. It is additionally inspiring to see children and young people at daily Mass.
Seven years ago, my family and a handful of other families trekked yearly to St. Joseph Communication’s large Catholic Family Conference in Los Angeles. Now dozens of families from our parish attend. One year someone hired a couple of busses. As lay people become more inspired, it seems to help the clergy, too. Maybe it’s just my imagination, but it seems that the quality of the homilies by all our priests is getting better all the time.
I suspect that all this is just the beginning. In the time of John Paul II, seeds were sown. Now in the time of Benedict XVI, spring has sprung.
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Katherine Andes is the co-author with Matt Pinto of Friendly Defenders Catholic Flash Cards. She is also a freelance commercial, proposal, and grant writer. You can write her at [email protected] or visit her web site at KatherineAndes.com.
