The FAITH FEEDS program is designed for individuals who are hungry for opportunities to talk about their faith with others who share it. Participants gather over coffee or a potluck lunch or dinner, and a host facilitates conversation using the C21 Center’s biannual magazine, C21 Resources.
The FAITH FEEDS GUIDE offers easy, step-by-step instructions for planning, as well as materials to guide the conversation. It’s as simple as deciding to host the gathering wherever your community is found and spreading the word.
All selected articles have been taken from material produced by the C21 Center.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Who should host a FAITH FEEDS?
Anyone who has a heart for facilitating conversations about faith is perfect to host a FAITH FEEDS.
Where do I host a FAITH FEEDS?
You can host a FAITH FEEDS in-person or virtually through video conference software. FAITH FEEDS conversations are meant for small groups of 10-12 people.
What is the host’s commitment?
The host is responsible for coordinating meeting times, sending out materials and video conference links, and facilitating conversation during the FAITH FEEDS.
What is the guest’s commitment?
Guests are asked to read the articles that will be discussed and be open to faith-filled conversation.
Still have more questions?
No problem! Email karen.kiefer@bc.edu and we’ll help you get set up.
READY TO GET STARTED?
STEP ONE
Decide to host a FAITH FEEDS. Coordinate a date, time, location, and guest list. An hour is enough time to allocate for the virtual or in-person gathering.
STEP TWO
Interested participants are asked to RSVP directly to you, the host. Once you have your list of attendees, confirm with everyone via email. That would be the appropriate time to ask in-person guests to commit to bringing a potluck dish or drink to the gathering. For virtual FAITH FEEDS, send out your video conference link.
STEP THREE
Review the selected articles from your FAITH FEEDS Guide and the questions that will serve as a starter for your FAITH FEEDS discussion. Hosts should send their guests a link to the guide, which can be found on bc.edu/FAITHFEEDS.
STEP FOUR
Send out a confirmation email a week before the FAITH FEEDS gathering. Hosts should arrive early for in-person or virtual set up. Begin with the Gathering Prayer found on the last page of this guide. Hosts can open the disussion by using the suggested questions. The conversation should grow organically from there. Enjoy this gathering of new friends, knowing the Lord is with YOU!
STEP FIVE
Make plans for another FAITH FEEDS. We would love to hear about your FAITH FEEDS experience. You can find contact information on the last page of this guide.
CONVERSATION STARTERS
Here are two articles to guide your FAITH FEEDS conversation. We suggest that you select one that will work best for your group, and if time permits, add in a second. In addition to the original article, you will find a relevant quotation, summary, and suggested questions for discussion. We offer these as tools for your use, but feel free to go where the Holy Spirit leads. Conversations should respect and ensure confidentiality between participants.
This guide’s theme is: Parishes: Past, Present, and Future
GOD’S BENCH
By Michael R. Simone, S.J.
From C21 Resources Spring/Summer 2020
Since 2004, I have worshipped and worked in an historic neighborhood of Boston called the “North End,” a residential district north and east of downtown. The area has been home to diverse peoples: Puritan settlers who arrived in 1630; free people of African descent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; Irish immigrants who worked on the waterfront during the nineteenth century, and Italian and Jewish immigrants who came in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While the Jewish community remained modest in size, Italians came in such numbers that by 1920 they made up the vast majority of residents.
Although the population today is only a quarter what it once was, the North End still bustles with activity. More than 100 Italian restaurants draw thousands of diners every week. Tourists visiting sites on Boston’s Freedom Trail fill the sidewalks. Good housing stock and proximity to corporate headquarters downtown have drawn many young professionals to the neighborhood’s apartments and condos. The result is relentless bustle.
Unlike Italian enclaves in many other cities, which have lost their ethnic population and become, in essence, Italian restaurant districts, the North End still retains a number of Italian-American families. In the warmer months, one can find older residents sitting on front stoups, park benches, and sidewalk chairs. North Enders transact a surprising amount of business this way. Neighbors share news and gossip. Older people offer their thoughts—solicited or not—to passersby, and everyone provides tourists with directions to their favorite pizzeria. People take note of elderly or infirm neighbors, and look in on the ones who haven’t made an appearance in a while. The network of these benches and chairs provides the vital current that keeps the North End a living neighborhood.
At the center of the neighborhood is the Roman Catholic parish of Saint Leonard of Port Maurice. Franciscan Friars founded the parish in 1873 and dedicated it to Leonardo Casanova, a fellow friar canon-
ized in 1867. Casanova had spent his ministry preaching retreats throughout Italy, and was an apt patron for the neighborhood’s burgeoning Italian community. The parish grew quickly, and by 1899 required the sizable building it uses today.
The structure is unapologetically Italianate. Romanesque arches support a central dome and rounded apse. Statues of saints line the outer aisles, and painted images of saints and angels leave little unused space on the walls. The first time I walked in, I had to pause and take a breath. Even the madding street outside did not adequately prepare me for the visual overload of the church’s interior.
In the mid-twentieth century, the North End was home to four Catholic parishes: St. Leonard’s, St. Stephen’s, St. Mary’s, and Sacred Heart. The steady decline in population forced difficult decisions. St. Mary’s closed and was demolished. St. Stephen’s and Sacred Heart ceased operating as parishes but remain open as chapels. Saint Leonard’s was larger than the other parishes, but because of declining numbers of parishioners, it required a subsidy from the archdiocese to remain open. The scandals and financial shocks of the first years of the 21st century forced a reimagination of the Catholic presence in the North End.
I recently spoke with Fr. Antonio Nardoianni, OFM, the Franciscan friar who served as pastor of St. Leonard’s from 2004–2019. Born and raised in Italy, Fr. Antonio came to the U.S. as a young priest, serving at Franciscan parishes in Boston and Toronto. According to him, the biggest change to St. Leonard’s
during those fifteen years was a demographic transition. From the 1970s to the 1990s, St. Leonard was an aging parish with declining enrollment. Around 2000, however, the parish saw an upsurge in younger parishioners, especially young professionals who had moved into the neighborhood. This influx has led to a modest increase in the parish census for the first time in decades. Fr. Antonio recognizes this as a blessing, even as it brings new challenges. The neighborhood’s younger people tend to be transient, spending at most five years in the North End before moving elsewhere.
The transience of younger parishioners causes some tension. After years of worship, long-term parishioners find lots of meaning in the formal liturgies, familiar lectors and servers, traditional devotions, and summer festivals. They resist changing them for transient newcomers. Compromise yields benefits to the wider church, however. Many young people drift away from their faith; finding a place that welcomes, even if only for a few years, improves the chances that they will continue to practice their faith after they move on.
Yet these same elder parishioners are also behind two recent successes. First, their commitment has helped the parish stabilize its finances and attendance. Antonio points especially to the parishioners who joined Saint Leonard’s after Sacred Heart closed. Even as they mourned the loss of their spiritual home, they doubled down on helping their new parish survive. In general, parishioners have been more than generous with their time and financial resources (Antonio suspects that some may have even given more than their means allow).
This commitment supported the second success, when on December 17, 2017, the church was rededicated after more than a year of rebuilding and restoration. The interior, refurbished in the 1960s after the changes of Vatican II, was by the early 2000s in need of serious cleaning and renovation. More troubling was an engineering assessment that revealed problems that threatened the structural integrity of the church building. The support of current and former parishioners as well as visitors and friends—coupled with an astonishing million-dollar matching gift—resulted in a $2 million budget to seal the leaking roof and foundation, restore the artwork, purchase a new organ, and bring the building up to code.
Tourists walking the Freedom Trail will pass by St. Leonard’s between Paul Revere’s house and the Old North Church. Many find the restored, brightly lit interior a destination in itself. The church building is open from early morning until about 10:00 pm, and at any time one can find people inside praying or viewing the artwork. In addition, the parish staff makes an effort to be available; on most days, staff members help run a small store offering books and religious art. Ministry and care to visitors became an increasingly important part of Fr. Antonio’s job during his fifteen years as pastor. During his tenure, he received many letters from one-time visitors who were grateful and surprised to find a place to pray and a listening ear in the heart of a major city. One-time gifts from grateful visitors funded a significant part of the restoration project and continue to help support the parish today.
Just as North End residents keep the neighborhood alive from their chairs on sidewalks and front porches, so does God from St. Leonard’s. The parish is God’s bench. Divine grace reinforces bonds of friendship and family, and provides unexpected wisdom and comfort to visitors. Such service is guiding the parish as it imagines its future ministry. Even while honoring its heritage as a close-knit, immigrant faith community, St. Leonard’s has become a place where young people can put down their first roots and strangers can be surprised by grace. In this, I think the parish’s future looks very much like the North End’s past—a place where waves of people coming and going have not changed the reality of a loving God abiding in their midst.
Michael Simone, S.J., is an Assistant Professor of Old Testament at Boston College’s School of Theology and Ministry and has also served as a priest at the parishes of Saint Leonard and Saint Cecilia in Boston, and as a chaplain for the Veterans’ Administration Maryland Health Care System.
GOD’S BENCH
“Divine grace reinforces bonds of friendship and family, and provides unexpected wisdom and comfort to visitors.”
—Fr. Michael R. Simone, S.J.
Summary
Fr. Michael Simone, S.J. reflects on how throughout its long history, one Boston parish has adapted the way it serves a changing demographic. The flexible and dynamic practices they employ might be useful to other parishes facing population changes.
Questions for Conversation
1. Can you reflect on a parish experience that you have had that forced your parish to make big adjustments or reinvent itself to keep moving forward?
2. There’s something so special about St. Leonards parish. It is home to both old and young parishioners, those who stay for a while and those that pass through. how can a parish become God’s bench for others?
3. How long have you been a member of your parish? What keeps you coming back? If you have left a parish, why did you leave?
A PARISH FOR THE FUTURE
By John Bauer
From C21 Resources Spring/Summer 2020
This year, as we celebrate the 150th anniversary of our parish, I have been reflecting on how parishes have changed over the years and what they will be like in the future. And while I don’t have a crystal ball, I think that if parishes are to grow and thrive there are certain things they will need to do and be as we move forward. I would like to suggest six things that I believe parishes in general—and the Basilica in particular—will need to do and be as we move into the next 150 years.
1. Parishes need to be places of welcome and acceptance. More and more often I see groups defining themselves by what they stand in opposition to, rather than what they support and value. Parishes cannot be places of division, exclusion, or separation. I believe that if a parish is to flourish and grow,
the embrace of that parish can be no less than the embrace of our God’s love. We have a Big God, and we need a Big Church. Together, all of us compose the Body of Christ. Parishes that fail to be places of welcome and acceptance will be parishes that won’t grow and flourish.
2. Parishes need to be places of caring and companionship. By this I mean that parishes must be places that give voice to and are the physical expression of God’s love to those in need. We are companions and fellow travelers on the journey of faith. Parishes must give clear witness to and be concrete examples of our common discipleship in Christ Jesus by our care and concern for everyone.
3. Parishes must be places of challenge and disappointment. Parishes must continually challenge people by always raising the question, “What more is God asking of us?” In this regard, I think people—
and parishes—function best when they are at the edge of, as opposed to the middle of, their comfort zone. Parishes must constantly challenge people not to grow too comfortable. In striving to do this, though, there is bound to be disappointment. Parishes cannot meet everyone’s expectations. I believe that is a good thing. If parishioners are never disappointed in their parish, they are asking too little of their parish.
4. Parishes need to be places where people’s faith is informed and where their spirits are nurtured. Most obviously this occurs through programs of education and enrichment for all ages. It also occurs, though, through the witness of people’s lives and through the sharing of their faith. What helps parishes to do this, it seems to me, is to never lose sight of the fact that everything parishes do must be done in the name of and in response to the Lord Jesus Christ.
5. Parishes must always be places of worship and prayer. People in parishes may not always agree with each other, they may face difficulties and conflicts, but something is wrong when people cannot set aside their differences and worship and pray together. When we worship and pray together, we acknowledge that we are not sufficient unto ourselves and that we need God. It is only in prayer, expressed and experienced in our worship, that a parish can discern God’s abiding presence and know the guidance of God’s spirit. Without prayer, our best efforts must surely fall short and our best hopes are not enough.
6. Finally, parishes must always keep their eyes trained on the future. Parishes need to continually remind people that our ultimate destination is the Kingdom of God. Parishes that get too caught up in the here and now—important as that might be—run the risk of losing sight of their ultimate goal. Parishes do much good and important work, but if they are not also challenging people to prepare for eternity, they are bound to fail. We are journeyers in this world, our ultimate home is heaven. Parishes must always keep this idea in the forefront of people’s minds.
John Bauer is
Fr.
the pastor of the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis, Minnesota.,
A PARISH FOR THE FUTURE
“Parishes cannot meet everyone’s expectations. I believe that is a good thing. If parishioners are never disappointed in their parish, they are asking too little of their parish..”
—Fr. John Bauer
Summary
Fr. John Bauer assesses the current landscape of the Catholic Parish. Bauer offers six suggestions that will position the Catholic Church to thrive. From placing an emphasis on acceptance and inclusion to fostering an environment of spiritual growth, Fr. Bauer’s overview is a product of his long and rich experience as a pastor for the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis Minnesota.
Questions for Conversation
1. What are some suggestions for what you believe parishes need to do and be as we move into the next 150 years?
2. Fr. Bauer believes that “Parishes must challenge people not to grow too comfortable.” Do you agree with this sentiment?
3. Fr. Bauer recommends that parishes must always keep their eyes trained on the future in preparing journeyers for the ultimate home (heaven). What are some ways you or your parish exercise this vision?
