March 22, 2007

The St. Paul children’s choir posed after a recent mass. Front row, left to right: Emma Romohr, Michael Crabtree, Rhona Marion, Tristan Giardullo, Alex Crabtree, Ethan Eggeman and Coordinator of Music Ministry Jo Frannye Reichert. Back row: Church Organist Patty Alexander, Rachel Pry, Nicole Pacer, Hannah Brown, Zarine Giardullo, Chuck Pry and Evan Eggeman.

By Virgil Hervey

On a recent visit to Sunday mass at St. Paul Catholic Church, almost every one of the 220 seats was filled. Some of the 150-year-old church’s problems seem the kind that other older established churches in Yellow Springs might wish for — not enough parking on Sunday morning; a shortage of seats in the sanctuary during services; and where to put all the kids in the Sunday school.

According to Father Mark Meyer, St. Paul’s pastor, the church currently has over 350 families. Some Sundays church officials have to add extra rows of chairs, Deacon Paul Richardson said when interviewed recently. This despite the fact that the church holds a vigil mass on Saturday evenings.

“The Sunday school is bigger than ever,” said longtime member Corinne Pelzl. The church has so many young people they don’t know where to put them all —- 135 in all. However, the problem may soon be alleviated, she said, by moving youth activities into the upstairs of the rectory next door, when the pastor moves to other quarters.

Michael Brown, a lifelong Catholic who moved to Yellow Springs and started attending St. Paul with his family 15 years ago, attributes this growth to the religious education program for children run by Director of Religious Education Carole Grady.

“Understanding their religion keeps them involved,” Brown said in a recent interview. He and his wife, Anita, have three children who attend the church.

Father Mark, who came to the church last July when Pastor Father Joseph Raudabaugh retired, also serves at St. Charles in South Charleston. His arrival prompted a collective sigh of relief from parishioners.

“We thought we were going to be without a priest,” said Pelzl in a recent interview.

While most Catholics agree that many positive things came out of Vatican II, the ecumenical council which was started in 1962 by Pope John XXIII and concluded in 1965 under Pope Paul VI, such as the elimination of most of the Latin from the mass and the encouragement of congregational participation, the fears of more conservative Catholics — a decline in religious vocations — has come to pass.

“The message with the shortage of priests is that churches can only survive with strong community involvement,” parishioner Mary Fisher said in a recent interview. Fisher sees a link between the shortage of priests and the requirement of celibacy. “That’s a modern convention, only since the Middle Ages,” she said.

One reason for the big crowds at the 11 o’clock Sunday mass is that the church lost its 8 o’clock mass due to the shortage of priests, Pelzl said. Father Mark conducts an earlier mass at St. Charles on Sundays.

There are also weekday masses on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday at 8 a.m., and Monday and Wednesday at 7 p.m. According to Richardson the weekday masses are usually attended by 15–20 worshippers, except for Wednesday nights during Lent, which are better attended.

The church has loosened up in other ways, too. For instance, there are no more “altar boys.” According to longtime parishioner Donna Haller, that change came about in the 90s during the term of Father Edmund Hussey, and was very controversial for the times, not so much with Yellow Springers as with Catholics in other towns. The new term, “servers” is intentionally gender neutral.

Watching 20 kids undergoing server training before mass, most of them girls, Father Mark commented, “That’s the way it should be.” Historically, women have played a big role in the church, but without the recognition they deserved, he said.

“There’s a huge difference in the emphasis of the hierarchy, but women still get short shrift,” Fisher said.

The issue of women in the priesthood was one that was often addressed by Father Joseph Goetz in his sermons during his tenure throughout most of the 90s, Brown said. However, Father Raudabaugh, who replaced him, stuck to the more conservative party line, and the Browns were prompted to try out other parishes for awhile. Father Raudabaugh is gone and they are back.

According to Haller, who has raised four children in St. Paul, “Father Mark has livened up the church.” He steps out from behind the pulpit to deliver his sermons and has made it easier for the children to pay attention, she said. He has also shortened the masses to one hour. Under Father Raudabaugh, the services had crept up to an hour and 20 minutes, she said.

“The personality of the pastor matters a lot,” Fisher said.

Father Mark, who entered the seminary after having studied electronics and automated manufacturing technology in college and working in the public sector for several years, served as a Maryknoll missionary in Bolivia where he worked in orphanages for several years, before returning to his native Ohio to serve St. Charles and St. Paul. He was raised on a farm north of Covington. “It was a typical farm for a German Catholic family with 11 kids,” he told the parish in a written introduction. He likes small town life and is happy to be serving Yellow Springs, he said in a recent interview.

The Arch Diocese of Cincinnati appoints the pastors for six-year terms, but the Parish Pastoral Council and various commissions, such as Building and Grounds, Cemetery, Education, Finance Council and Worship Contact actually run the church. “The pastor does the ministering, while the councils make the church strong,” Fisher said.

Fisher joined St. Paul when she moved to Yellow Springs 16 years ago. She had left the Catholic Church while attending graduate school in Boston and attended Episcopal services there. With no Episcopal church in town, she decided to give St. Paul a try and was pleasantly surprised.

“St. Paul has an active community that has always been inclusive and welcoming,” she said. “Everyone knows each other, and they actually sing during church.”

Bruce Heckman came to St. Paul in an unusual way. Heckman, whose father was a Presbyterian elder, was himself a Presbyterian until the age of 25. He became a Quaker near the end of the Vietnam War. When he moved to Yellow Springs in 1986, he began attending the Quaker meeting here.

A visit to the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky in 1989 interested him in the monastic life. Soon thereafter, he met Father Hussey, then the pastor at St. Paul and decided to become a Catholic. He also continued to attend the Quaker meeting.

It was the spirituality of the monks that attracted him to the Catholic Church, Heckman said in a recent interview. According to Heckman, the Quakers believe that ritual and sacraments are distractions. However, Heckman feels drawn to the mystery of the Catholic experience. He feels that it doesn’t need to be figured out or resolved. “You enter into it and hang out in it,” he said.

Another aspect of St. Paul’s that draws in members is what they call “small Christian church communities.” At St. Paul, these are groups of between 4–10 members who pray together and share their faith. Trent Fisher, Mary Fisher’s husband, is a member of one such group. While St. Paul would not be considered a large church by Catholic standards, these small groups are a way of keeping the faithful from getting lost in the larger congregation. According to Trent Fisher, group members share their day-to-day trials as well as deeper concerns. However, they are not intended to be social groups, he said, and are more likely to be set up by date and time availability, than based on common interests.

As in most of the churches in town, music plays an important part in worship. Jo Frannye Reichert leads the adult and children’s choirs and has recently added liturgical dance to some of the services. On this visit to the church, the children’s choir performed.

The upbeat sermon, delivered by Father Mark with a wry sense of humor that drew laughs a couple of times, reminded the congregation that “we have a God of hope, a God of second chances,” who forgives failures in life and faith.

“When you come right down to it, it’s really about faith,” Brown said. “The belief in a higher being that can save us gives us hope.”

Contact: vhervey@ysnews.com