many of us perhaps take it for granted: the catholic parish. the parish has always been tholic life hello. welcome to "mosaic". we're going to talk today about an institution that every catholic knows about. an institution so familiar that many of us take it for granted. the catholic parish. the parish has always been the life for the chicago lay person. there is participation in mass every sunday and an opportunity for year after year of a richly textured multilayered life combining the educational and social, the recreational and come mynal but participation in

this parish life has been declining and parishes face challenges. >> co-author of the important book renewing parish culture. the local parish is the cultural home base of american catholics and in these smallest and most basic units, the catholic culture is nurtured, sustained. it depends to a great extent on the vibrancy of parish life. what are the challenges? what are the possibilities? please stay with us and after this short break we'll talk talk to dr. melanie morrie about the catholic parish.

fo hello. welcome back. we have with us today dr. melanie morey and welcome to you. thank you. >> thank you, john. >> a little about you. a bachelor's degree from smith college. masters from boston college and harvard university and a doctorates from harvard. you have an expertise in catholic identity and catholic culture. today at the archdiocese of san

francisco. you published extensively including the book called renewing parish culture, building for a catholic future and you have taught and worked in parishes so you have hands- on experience. >> what is the anatomy of the parish? i think it has three groups. it has the people, largest group. the staff, smaller group. and then the priests, if you're lucky enough to have a priest. a priest is one or two of three. of these three groups i would like you to talk about the challenges of all three and let's start with the people, the congregation. we know there is a decline in parish participation. can you suggest what is keeping people away? >> well, one of the things about parishes is they have these internal parts and constituents, actors, but they also live against the backdrop of a larger whiter culture, so

myself, i have been a parishioner where i grew up in salt lake city on the east coast, in florida, in seattle, here in san francisco. the backdrop in each of those places is somewhat different and it has an impact on the mindset, the attitudes and the reality of those who are in catholic parishes so those two things are going to be playing against each other. i think people are largely familiar with a lot of research that is being done in the united states which is one of the most religious countries in the world. there is an increasing number of people who identify as none. n0ne. >> none. people who may have some kind of spiritual attitude, disposition, but they don't identify with any religious tradition, so that is one part. in a place like san francisco,

one of the things that is also interesting is like many places in the united states, there is a lot of demographic change. there is an article this past weekend in the new york times about the fact that there is a crisis of children in san francisco. unlike most cities, there are only 13% of the population is under the age of 18. >> wow! so, if there are fewer young people and many more of those identifying as nones and less and less involvement of young people in parishes, you have to begin to ask the question, well, what about the future? where are we going? is there a succession plan for those of us who are much older and in many ways sustaining parish life here in this archdiocese. people are out of the habit of going to their parish.

let's say there is not a younger cohort visibly coming up, but what about the older adult catholics, have they tapered off? >> to some extent. one of the things that has happened in american life is in the 1800s, as an immigrant population, waves of immigrants came and many of them were catholic. irish, german, italian. they identified with our national parish. catholics ran a parallel culture in the united states. we had our own insurance companies, we had our own youth organizations, we had everything that the secular society had, we replicated in catholic life so it was the great meeting place that kept this community tightly together. in a make can youture today, i

think it is pretty obvious that with families, the great unifier is sports. so much of their weekends are spent going from this hockey game to that hockey game and we are very, very busy people. they don't find the need or have the need to have a social anchor in parish life, so they dip in and they dip out in ways that was not the case. the parish was where it was all happening. your children were going to school there, your social networks were there. this was your shared experience for a religious group that was not always in good favor in this country. i think that makes sense. in many ways catholics were not welcomed in early history. i think we are now, but we're

losing our distinctive culture in our parishes, i guess a social institution and losing some vibrancy as a say cred institution. >> parishes are very interesting. if you look at san francisco, there are new waves of immigration. in california and in san francisco, a very catholic population. latin america. >> right. >> mexico. central america. >> philippines. >> philippines. >> vietnam. to name a few. this is our generation's immigrant ways and they are coming and they are coming with the faith and where are they going? and how are they experiencing parish life? those of us who were part of the irish italian catholic german catholic communities, we

see our parishes changing. we see them aging. we see a new generation not particularly connected and there is this sense of contractions. >> okay. >> so what do the people in the pews do? i think there is a tendency to sit in the pews and say, you know the parish is getting smaller, it is getting older. where are the people? we don't see ourselves as ambassadors to faith. we're not reaching out and saying you're new to the neighborhood, come join us. this sense of there has to be a reason for people to come. there has to be a connection. >> on that note, let's take a brief break and when we'll come back we'll discuss the age of laity in which laity are taking over more and more of the staffing work at the parishes. please join us.

fo hello and welcome back to "mosaic" with dr. melanie morey. we're talking about parish culture and the renewal of parish culture. there are waves of immigration bringing their faith, parishes being expanded and built. many groups and that continues today with vibrant people working hard in their parishes. let's move to the fact that it is the age of the laity. in the parish all these important positions are being done by laity. i would like to have you address a certain aspect which is wonderfully x mec cated in your book. you report as many histories have said that for decades and decades, the sisters, the

religious sisters did this heavy lifting in the parishes and were the go-to people for helping catholic culture that no longer exists but you have anlized their approach to their work and virtues they have exercised and innovative techniques and i think you're trying to decide if we can imitate those approaches and things and, you know, build a future for ourselves. >> as you say, religious congregations, women's religious congregations were the people responsible for transferring ca thalcism. we have a lot of time and attention we spent and we focused on the priests and they are the leaders of our parishes but the cultural context was always shaped by nuns and they had the thickest and richest and deepest culture within the

church and they were responsible for passing that on. when you examine what they did, they had these little cultural packages that they developed, created and consistently worked through and moved and adjusted with whichever group they were working with and with an eye to the future and an eye to always more and better and more and better. so they had this great sense of our best days are coming and we are the agents of that so they had these little cultural practices of a prac ticks that was accompanied by affairtive that had some norms and had a benefit. that particular process is how we are a culture rated in any circumstance and they were

magnificent at it. >> give me those four elements as gen. >> a practice, accompanied by a narrative, and there are benefits and there are norms. >> now, i'll give you a classic old one, not one we would necessarily want to revisit today, but that was sunday mass. sunday mass was required. attending mass every single sunday was always without fail and the narrative was very, very sus sink and clear. go to mass, you'll go to have ven. don't go to mass, you'll go to hell. the benefit was obvious. you did this. now, clearly that is not where we want to go, but the extent to which we have actualsly developed a compelling narrative for why anyone should go to mass, we haven't come up

with something as compelling and it is not because you don't go, because you don't want to go to hell. you go for an encounter with christ but somehow we have to work on our narratives and consist s stently talk about the practice, the narrative. norm, being every week, and the benefit. what is the benefit? to you as an individual and to the church community as a whole. now, we have had this new generation of people who have committed their lives to the service of the church and they have paid to educate themselves. they work often for far less wage than they might in other places. they are responsible for creating the parish culture and working with the pastor in order to make that happen. >> right. >> one way i heard this expressed is that the lay people are trying to take over the carism of the religious

orders and do the kinds of things they did. what is interesting about your book, you specify, analyze how they do that. they were innovative, insightful. the sisters were running corporations and doing all kinds of difficult things that we don't think of meek obedient sisters doing. >> no. the nuns were great women who had such deep faith and such confidence in the providence of god that they were doing god's work and they had huge dreams and they made those dreams come true and they made them come true in our lifes. we said the sisters were able to see in children a capacity they could not see in themselves and had the energy to help us realize it. >> wow! >> it is more difficult in the sir stances today for the people who worked in lay ministry, but i think one of

the great important lessons that we learned from the sisters is how they viewed young people in this -- in the passing on of the faith. >> okay. >> our tendency now is to focus on the adults with the idea that they are the first educators of children and there is this sort of the trickle down. >> okay. >> sisters looked at it very differently. they knew the parents were not comfortable doing this. they support the sisters but they focus their attention on the children and they leveraged that, the love of the parents for the children and their desire for their children's welfare to bring the parents in and continue their education in the faith. so what about today? we have fewer young people attending mass on a regular basis and there is a fair amount of social pressure not to go. >> i see. >> well, are there places in

the parish that they can see themselves? are these lay members the staff taking a page out of sisters' books and saying let's gather all these young people, find places for them, let them know that they belong, that there are things they can do, that they can contribute to this parish life and their contribution is important and when they do, they will bring their parents with them. >> and there are benefits. let's take a break at this moment and we'll come back. we'll talk to dr. melanie morey more about parish culture in our next segment.

hello and welcome back. we're talking with dr. melanie morey about parish culture and we're at the last piece of the parish, the rectory, the clergy where the priest or priests liver and do their work. you have described the priest's role as being a three-fold thing, to offer the sacra minutes, to lead the local faithful and to spread christ's message how does the priest fulfill that role in an american parish today? there are challenges, there are opportunities. >> well, in many ways, the priests are as powerful if not more so today than they were before, but their function is

somewhat different. i mean, they were literally sort of the ruler of their turf for a long period of time. to some extent that is still true. i mean, they have responsibilities that belongs to them, but what is important for the people in the pews, the parish priest is still the visible leader of the parish. he is the visible actual spiritual leader of this community of people, and anybody who has been in a catholic parish knows that when the pastor changes, it is significant in the life of the parish. there is sometimes resistance to that change. there is sometimes great joy of that change, but there is an enormous cultural impact and parish priests set the tone by how thwi the staff

and with the people, and also by the way they perceive their own reality. and that gets played out in the narratives that they say with the people, not only about scripture, about the faith, but about the community itself. now, i think it is possible to think of this as a shrinking community and when you do, you get very careful about how do we spend our money? how are we being thrifty? how are we being stewards in that sense, because you see the pool is declining. you're worried about it. >> yes. >> the sisters that i think in another generation of priests as well had this view of a faith and divine providence in the sense of the tomorrow's being better tomorrows

depending on what they were doing so they had an expansive view of this gift of the faith, a gift that brought them great joy and one that they wanted to share. if that is your mindset, what you're going to end up doing is saying well, maybe we have not a ton now, but it is only because we haven't tapped our resources. it is only because we haven't expands the pool. the father and i used to talk about trying to grow the market share of catholics. this mentality of they just haven't heard the good news. they haven't joined us yet. in that sense, let me give you an example. coming to san francisco, i came from the east coast which in the winter it is freezing cold and in the summer it is sul terring hot and parishes have to heat and light these institutions and they do. if not for the love of the

people, certainly for the love of the pipes. >> [ laughter ] >> but here, in california, you know, you think of this as very tem pratt climate. churches are dark and cold very frequently because people are trying to save money and it is not that cold so we can all -- but there is a pinched feeling about things so if there is an expansive, this is the place, this is sacred ground, this is where we'll come together and where the lord will be with us again in holy communion. this is a place of warmth and joy and great community. this is god's house. then you expand. you open up. you make it as beautiful as inviting and then the community engages that in the sense of who we are be coming, not what

we are losing. >> so true. in an age of what you call contractions, people have said the more beauty, the better music, the more warmth in your church, the more welcoming it will be and people will come to get the truth that you're producing as they come to be welcomed into the community as well. you talk about opening up and expanding. i wanted to close by giving some parade to your book. this book is i think i can call it a how-to manuel for professionals but i'm not a professional and read it and very much enjoyed it. i think it is fascinating because what you have done in here in part is to help catholics relearn the stories of what it means to be catholic. things that we take for granted, this e we have forgotten about, things we no longer do. you tell fresh stories about why we do them and why we

should. thank you for being here. that is all the time we have. >> thank you. >> thanks for joining us on "mosaic." thank you dr. melanie morey. this has been very enlightening. we'll see you on our next program and thanks for listening.

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