St. Maximos' Hut

Here in the Nation’s Capitol, gasoline prices reached skyward this holiday weekend. We might ponder the question of price-gouging and its theological implications. Indeed, a number of “traditional” Catholics are divided on this question, as if one of the more colorful and vitriolic articles entitled Opposing the Austrian Heresy (Angelus, January 2005) is indicative. (Lew Rockwell and The Mises Institute, beware!)

However, I'll avoid this hot potato in light of thoughts on the nearly empty streets this weekend here in D.C. and down Richmond, Virginia. As Labor Day sales have failed to inspire driving to the malls and trips have been curtailed, it may well be that there is a blessing, at least a spiritual blessing, at work. (Ephesians 1:3)

Reflecting on my part of the world, we actually know or interact with few of our neighbors. Hereabout, a high degree of mobility, even among our myriad “environmentally conscious” (at least from bumper sticker declarations) neighbors, folks are just too busy running from event to event to bother with social discourse, much less the kind of community activities that seemed to loom large in my formative years. One even has to make “play dates” among children and coordinate their social calendars to maintain any sort of extracurricular contact among children of non-driving age. (Of course, once they drive, they are given cars and run off in search of their own social engagements, wholesome or not.

It is the same with churches and parishes. For four centuries, the territorial parish was the backbone of the Catholic church. While the 1983 Code of Canon Law stresses the parish as community above organization (canon 515), it continues to favor the territorial structure as a practical and necessary value (canon 518). The Pastor has the obligation to provide sacramental and catechetical ministry to all the Christian faithful within his territory and to collaborate in the building up of a Christian community. The faithful living within the territory of the parish have their own obligations to build up the kingdom of God by participation in worship and the life of the parish and to support its work.

Yet, the neighborhood parish or congregation is increasingly a rarity, as folks head to the exurbs to find just the right worship setting to suit their lifestyle, aesthetic, networking or other basis for choice. Call it consumer faith, the market-driven church, or any label one cares to attach. A recent study by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University indicated that about a quarter of Catholics regularly attend parishes outside of their neighborhoods.

While shortages in vocations and litigation-induced fiscal considerations also have contributed to the closure of neighborhood parishes, an attachment to a locus of Christian life has diminished with high mobility.
Both the notion of neighborhood church and actual contact among neighbors may benefit from a diminished inclination to bear the cost of non-essential driving.

For the faithful, it’s more than social: it’s deeper. Catholic thinkers have marveled at the vitality of neighborhood parishes. Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day said they were attracted to the Church through regular working people coming together in unity around the Eucharist in simple neighborhood churches.

This month’s Touchstone magazine contains a wonderful letter from an Orthodox Christian, who lives close by her parish in Alaska where any number of factors keep one in the neighborhood. She writes of the challenges attendant in living in a tightly-knit community, but of the great joys and benefits of this kind of Christian life.
As well, Peter Fuerhard has a fine piece on why he sticks with his neighborhood parish rather than “church shopping”. http://www.uscatholic.org/2003/11/sb0311.htm

Perhaps the gasoline market will reinvigorate the neighborhood church, and the neighborhoods themselves.