A People's Parish

...According to him, "The purpose of liturgy is to give expression to a person's inner feelings in such a context and such a manner as to further his/her spiritual growth...

...Commonweal: 497 One is struck by the balance that the Community has achieved between social action and worship...

...It only allows them to splash around in their considerable talents...

...It is embodied in a single Moray eel which lives on the wreck in a hatch that the three divers must swim past on their way to and from the treasure trove...

...When Americans were afraid of external aggression and foreign ideologies, back in the fifties, science-fiction films were serious business...

...She even has the fish eating out of her hand...

...He reduces the film's plot to an old-fashioned contest between good and evil...

...But as both an oceanographic space and a psychological one, it remains unexplored...

...To speak of liturgy as evolving," Father Murray wrote in 1970, "is not to assume that the liturgies of the past were wrong and must now be corrected...

...Numerous attempts to discover a new language for Christian worship over the past twenty years have either died as "underground churches" or "guitar Masses" or (as in the case of traditionalists' effort to continue Tridentine Masses) have been systematically suppressed...

...Instead of an exploration of the primordial, the plot turns into the opposite of that, an exploration of history...

...THE SHALLOWS OOOOO OOOOOOOOO THE SCREEN In the first place, The Deep is something of a movie of lost souls, a backwater into which two stars who have never made it as big as they shouldmJacqueline Bisset and Robert Shawwhave drifted...

...One senses, nonetheless, that the liturgy grows naturally out of the community, its meetings and its committee on liturgy...

...Truth to tell, if only we could enjoy it on its own terms, The Deep is not all that bad a thriller...

...Without condoning divorce, he and the Community try to respond to those facing the trauma of "coming apart...

...If the film is too shallow for its stars, moreover, in other, more detrimental ways it is also too shallow for its audience...

...Mass audience movies like these are always trying to tell us something about where our collective head is...

...One recognizes in much of the Sunday celebration many vestiges of the past...

...Aemelian's Recreational Center in east-central Wisconsin, emphasizes "relationships and how to improve them...

...Although it began as a liturgical group, its most original characteristic at this time is organization--not so much what it has developed in its liturgy, but how it has developed as a congregation...

...He leads--one might say choreographs-the whole performance...

...Although regarded with some suspicion by the more fundamentalist Protestant churches, as well as by some Catholic parishes, the Community works in close cooperation with most member churches, and a sympathetic Presbyterian minister has served as homilist and advisor on several occasions...

...They are only his torpedoes, a gang of paid assassins, a mob of teeth for hire...

...In describing his work, he returns to a theme first made popular by Pope John XXIII: "I think the professional (the priest) is the one who opens up the door . . . . My philosophy is to provide the opportunity for everyone to be a part of the church...

...A slide presentation arranged by Michael Riordan for the recent fifth anniversary celebration reminded the Community of its eventful history and provided the impetus, for some members, for new responsibilities...

...The appeal which the deep itself should have had as the antagonist in this film is of course the same as that which the shark had in the earlier Peter Benchley script, Jaws...

...Oh sure, the divers are attacked by a bunch of sharks at one point...

...The real "deep" is ,presumably murky, sinister and forbidding, but the movie doesn't get that far down...

...Although he found its priest, Father Marek, neither schismatic nor heretical, the Rector said that he did not understand how "phenomenological sacramentality fits into the mainstream of Catholic thought...

...It attempts to take an event or a happening and put it into focus through sensible means, so that the event, happening, or idea would be a benefit toward human growth...

...A typical adult weekend, held three times a year at St...

...The sermons on Sunday include frequent references and quotations from the Catholic Worker, the bulletin of the United Farm Workers, and the publications of various peace and justice groups...

...On the other hand, it can only live in the postponement in which nothing is done in a final way but only in a provisional and experimental way...

...in recent years, the budget for education has increased more rapidly than any other aspect of the program...

...In local parishes, on the other hand, about the only vestiges of attempts to change the old centralized patterns are the gesture of peace after the consecration, the stilted official English translations of the Mass, and an occasional lay person, now deaconized, but rather thoroughly confined by the usual clerical routine...

...One of the most striking characteristics of these primarily experimental groups, in fact, is their positive sense of themselves...

...But now that kind of science fiction is a joke, as Star Wars is demonstrating with great success...

...To leave life and death in the suspension of the experiment will mean to miss death but also life...

...From an historical perspective, the achievement of the Community of the Living Spirit follows a pattern or plan that has been imagined or projected in various writings published since Vatican II...

...One might say that it is high time, in congregations, for the revelatory word to become flesh...

...The structure of the Community has changed with the times and according to the needs of the group...

...What the Church waits for are groups of people to test those theoretical formulations...

...i i II A PEOPLE'S PARISH MICHAEL TRUE The W/sconsin Community of the Living Spirit At a time when many people are dissatisfied with the state of liturgy in the Catholic Church, the survival and continuing strength of a religious group that has developed its own style of liturgical celebration deserves special attention, if not outright commendation...

...But what that something was is then dropped like the stick itself and never confronted ~ain...

...The hope which is born out of the resurrection of Christ prepares one to live fully in the present and with ultimate love that life which is once for all...

...2) to encourage personal growth through education, "in understanding God's will for the members, collectively and individually...

...As sources of terror, they have the advantage of being found at home...

...On the contrary, it makes the shipwreck seem like a kind of fun house, where bogus thrills pop out of trap doors, and thereby renders the alleged deep shallower than ever...

...In the midst of this confusion, Father Marek, like so many priests now ministering to divorced Catholics, tries to give some spiritual guidance in a time of trial...

...but he keeps the celebration alive and clearly focused in a way that is quite foreign to most Catholic liturgies, presently gone stale in the sagging, post-Vatican II dispensation...

...In the coming years, the plans and budget--to allow for a more ambitious program--have substantially increased (from $19,100 to $26,100, with emphasis upon children's education and adult retreats...

...In the opening scene, for instance, Gail (Bisset) and her boyfriend Dave (Nick Nolte) are scuba diving while on vacation in Bermuda, and the bottom world they visit is such a dean, well-lighted one that we never get over our sense of complacency about it afterwards...

...The work of the Community reflects careful planning and broad involvement by many people, with the determined effort of the usual, dedicated core...

...In the intervening six years, they have found various 5 August 1977:496 ways, some traditional, some innovative, to carry out the general goals listed in Article II of the Community's bylaw: (1) to be more aware of the needs of people within and outside the Community, and to minister to them...

...But these are not representative of nature in all her glory and horror as the one shark in laws was...

...In this happy state of affairs (if one can judge from several outward signs), it thrives...

...Being a monster easily circumvented, and living in a niche in the wall like some fairytale dragon in its cave, or a latter-day Grendel, the eel...

...In the Community, women play a more significant part in determining policy than they do in most parishes, and several of them refused to read the section in the Epistle that declares that "wives should be submissive to their husbands...

...During the first few years of the Community's existence, Father Marek's assignment was part time...

...Nothing...

...More recently, the Rector of the diocesan seminary drove out from Milwaukee to look into the Community's practices, in relation to Church doctrine...

...The messianic life has both elements in itself: On the one hand, it is able to draw the future into the present and to do already today what will be tomorrow...

...William's parish, the liturgy moved first to the local YWCA and finally to the present location in the public school...

...They are only acting as agents for the character who is the real villain in this film, a Haitian gangster named Cloche (Louis Gossett) who's after thousands of ampules of morphine among the goodies the divers have recovered from their sunken World War II supply ship What can the sharks do to top Cloche's own malevolence in chumming tuna and fish blood to attract them around the divers' boats...

...It is incorporated as a non-profit organization, and holds membership in the local council of churches...

...From its origin, the Community pledged at least half of its financial resources to people in need...

...From that point to now, the growth and development has been steady, but trying, risky, and slow...

...In the words of Ann Houston, a co-founder of the Community who regards the formal structure as the basis for survival, "Planning time is community building...

...William's, the janitor, who was somewhat suspicious of their non-traditional style, took to shellacking the gym floor on Saturdays in order to prevent the people from gathering in the gym on Sunday morning...

...casual about some practices of the Catholic Church, they still feel guilty about breaking others...

...4) to remain open to change...

...Nothing dramatic, nothing desperately or self-consciously "new," it may not be a liturgy for everybody (perhaps we've learned, if nothing else over the past decade, that that's impossible anyway...

...Some members volunteer their services to the Waukesha Community Welfare Department, gathering and distributing clothes and money, trying to respond "in time and energy," as one member said, and not in "patronizing charity...

...Fathers Schmidt and Power have provided, through their writings, a philosophical and theological rationale for the revitalization of what has been called "the alienated liturgy...

...Recently denied permission to officiate at Catholic weddings (he got the ruling from the chancery second-hand), Father Marek retains his civil faculties to officiate at other marriages...

...Since the summer of 1971, in a city of 50,000 people twenty miles west of Milwaukee, the Community has worked to combine reverence with relevance and to maintain a non-geographic parish, with an ambitious educational program for adults and children and numerous activities expressing fundamental social and political concerns...

...The divers discover beneath the World War II ship and its cache of morphine the remains of an Commonweal: 499...

...Only if one can live, love and sacrifice life here with one's whole heart does one really trust in the resurrection of the crucified Christ...

...1) The infant baptism of Kelly Marie Hart, with a lighted candle for each member of the congregation and a welcoming procession for the new member of the Community...

...This is why nemeses like the shark in Jaws or the ocean in The Deep come to mind...

...There are several styles, several examples that one might point to where creative work has been done, some modelsm among various possibilities--where effective, if still tentative communities continue to function...

...At the moment, it seems that neither the Rector nor the diocese is quite sure what to do with the Community...

...Gall and Dave find traces of sunken treasure on this shelf where they are swimming in the opening scene, and the film stays marooned there throughout...

...The care that Father Marek gives to the liturgical celebration is evident in the dialogue homily, the often successful integration of music, reading and activities for the day...

...Knowingly or unknowingly, the Community of the Living Spirit in Waukesha, Wisconsin--alive and well and thriving-5 August 1977:498 does the hard work and takes the necessary risks, saying concretely that the worship of the people of God can be spoken in a contemporary idiom and that the new language and pattern can be as meaningful, at times, as anything from the past...

...But The Deep misses this mythological boat by not really making nature the villain of the piece as laws did...

...As one member, Dolores Kosednar, a nurse and mother of nine children said, "Each time the community seemed about to come apart, something happened to pull us through the crisis and back into shape...

...In his discussion of "The Language of Christian Worship," for example, Placid Murray, O.S.B., described what happens in communities similar to the one in Wisconsin, where the evolution of a new pattern of worship involves members of the Church at every level, and how necessary such experiments are if the evolution of a new style is ever to take place in Catholic worship...

...3) to celebrate life through a meaningful liturgy, with emphasis upon "the fundamental goodness of the life Jesus Christ has proclaimed to us...

...and a recent homily was preached by the Peace Pilgrim, an itinerant woman who has already walked over 25,000 miles throughout the United States, calling for an end to war and the policies of war...

...At St...

...Yet after five to ten years, some of the experimental religious groups have taken on lives of their own, and in several instances suggest a form for changes incorporating the needs and hopes of a changing Catholic constituency that is only infrequently aware of or attentive to the National Council of Catholic Bishops or to the legislative language of Canon Law...

...In subsequent scenes when she, Dave and a local adventurer (Shaw) return to the wreck to hunt for more treasure, the threat of the deep itself is literally shunted off to the side...

...The emphasis is still liturgical and ministerial, but social action receives more than the usual grudging acceptance characteristic of the traditional parish...

...and (5) to sustain and encourage one another in carrying out these goals...

...Some months ago she stopped in Waukesha, spent several days in the home of Ruth Browne, a long-time member of the Community, and brought her message to the Sunday liturgy...

...Instead of an invader from outer space, they are the enemy within, the one beneath the skin of our own world and, thus, the one secreted inside us ourselves...

...but in 1972, he resigned his position as chaplain and theology teacher at St...

...simply doesn't make nature an adequate antagonist...

...Michael Cullen of the Milwaukee 14 spoke, for example, during his days at Casa Mafia...

...But in contrast to most of the "official" liturgies, it has a human base: the lives and needs and hopes of the people it includes...

...MXCHAEL TaUE is an associate 9rofessor of English at Assumption College and lecturer at Clark University in Worcester, Mass...

...2) The discussion, surprisingly coherent in a congregation of about four hundred people, of St...

...Cut off from the official Church by virtue of their divorce, they are reluctant to remarry unless a priest officiates at the ceremony...

...Seminars and workshops, with discussants chosen from the Community, include topics such as sexual awareness, parent effectiveness training, people-making (based upon the psychological theories of Virginia Satir) and spirituality...

...Officers--president, vice-president, treasurer and recording secretary--are elected annually...

...Indeed, the creation of liturgical forms suitable to the needs of our age carries with it the implication that in this world of change the liturgy must continually be renewed so that it can be relevant to the human situation and to people's understanding of the reality of God...

...He deprives us of that enmity with our own nature, with Nature itself, which the film seemed to promise...

...During a recent coffee hour following the Sunday liturgy, I talked with Fred Beckman, for example, who left a local parish and joined the Community of the Living Spirit, where members have helped him through the initial adjustment following his separation...

...Cloche is the true villain here, but too human a one to be really contemporary...

...Members of the Community have developed an ambitious education program...

...That other deep, the one we thought the title referred to, yawns suggestively beyond the edge of the reef they're on, and occasionally some boulders go tumbling off into it...

...The liturgy is, in many senses, Father Marek's presentation (one of the only difficulties, it seems to me, as the group endeavors to understand and fulfill its commitment to a decentralized liturgy...

...Mary's Academy, in order to devote full time to the Community of the Living Spirit, eventually with the support of the bishop...

...As I mentioned at the beginning, the liturgy is, at this point, not startlingly original...

...The trouble with its terms is that they move farther and farther away from our expectations, from the confrontation with raw nature we came to the theater looking for...

...In a few instances throughout the United States, this necessary experimentation has already begun...

...Among several obvious models for such experimental change, the Community of the Living Spirit, in Waukesha, Wisconsin, provides a useful example...

...During my two recent visits, for example, the central part of the liturgy focused upon one local and one general concern...

...One of the obvious and principal forces sustaining the Community is the main celebrant for the Sunday liturgy, Father Dean Marek, a priest in his mid-thirties who walks the thin line between creative ministry and ecclesiastical conformity and--most important of all-brings a positive and concerned ministry to the congregation...

...The principal committees--Education, Liturgy, Membership, and Social--keep the Community in motion, with most of the budget raised through weekly collections...

...It Came from Outer Space, as a popular title of the day put it, and like "it", The Body Snatchers and the errant planet in When Worlds Collide, et al., suggested that America was threatened only by extra-terrestial enemies, by invasion from without...

...Similarly, in their excellent publication in the Concilium series, Herman Schmidt, S.J., and David Power, O.M.I., of the Gregorian University in Rome, discuss the ways in which, in the past, the Church practically suppressed "all community ministries other than those of the bishop and the ordained priest...

...To live as a Christian with the American dream can only mean to combine the dynamic of the provisional with the pathos of the final, and in place of the experimental lifestyle, to develop a lifestyle which combines the outline of hope with '.he sacrifice of love...

...A significant part of his ministry is devoted to divorced Catholics who come to him, he says, as a "last resort...

...The mood that brought them into being, a sense of alienation from or even hostility to the chacnery, to "the establishment," has been replaced by a positive sense of modest, but purposeful mission to bind up wounds, to bless, to carry on, with a confidence in themselves and their place in the larger community...

...It seems that recent events have us more worried about ourselves...

...In its initial proposal, presented to the archdiocesan priest senate of Milwaukee, in June, 1971, a group of people, most of them from a traditional Catholic parish, asked for a year's trial period "for a Waukesha community mission parish to form and function," pledging themselves "to teach our members about their faith, become more aware of the spiritual and corporal needs of our fellow man, and bring the Church to people who have abandoned this part of their lives...

...At the end of the opening sequence, something unseen underneath the hull of the wreck Gall is exploring does grab her probing stick and gives her, and us, quite a turn...

...The germ for the community existed from early meetings in I970, with the first expreimental liturgy performed in St...

...Paul's sexist letter to the Ephesians 5: 21-32...

...William's parish gym, on November 29 of that year...

...Beginning initially as a "gym" Mass, while still a part of St...

...The Community has survived several local conflicts about what some people referred to as "liturgical abuses...

...In fact, nature becomes little more than a sideshow in The Deep...

...What the shark in laws offered as well was the reassurance that such evil is not really evil at all, but rather something inherent in naturema primordial instinct which, no matter how savage and terrifying it might be, can never be made morally accountable...