Whose church is it, anyway?
Skerrett, Ellen
WHOSE CHURCH IS IT, ANYWAY? THE BATTLE FOR HOLY FAMILY, CHICAGO ELLEN SKERRETT In historic Holy Family parish on Chicago's West Side, black, Hispanic, and Italian Catholics are waging a vigorous...
...Ignatius remained on Roosevelt Road and continued the work of educating "talented young men of scanty means...
...Poor black and Hispanic parishioners, as well as old Italian Catholics, have no doubts...
...Aloysius for girls, and the convent academy of the Sacred Heart...
...At the time Holy Family Church was built, Chicago's Catholics were the poorest denomination in the city...
...Ignatius can be saved and restored to its original grandeur, then why not Holy Family Church, whose parishioners have never ceased to regard it as a sacred space...
...Far from accepting Spine's report as a peace offering, however, the parish council voted for his resignation...
...How important is a church structure in the life of a parish and its neighborhood...
...During a tumultuous meeting on June 8, the pastor surprised parishioners with a report outlining six "options" to the Holy Family "problem...
...the increasing cost of materials and labor...
...Would the estimated $3 to $5 million needed to restore the church be money well spent...
...Whether or not they succeed in saving their church, Holy Family parishioners have raised a number of significant issues concerning the mission of the urban church...
...Even more remarkable than the increase in enrollment, however, has been the transformation in attitudes toward the school building...
...He knew that Holy Family Church would attract thousands of Catholics and he wasted no time in building a church that would command their loyalty and love...
...The process began, simply enough, with the signing of petitions after Sunday Mass...
...Newspapers contain advertisements for new town-houses and apartments on the Near West Side...
...The irony in the Holy Family controversy is that the parishioners, the People of God, want to save their church building...
...Moreover, they dispute their pastor's contention that the Gothic church no longer meets the needs of the parish...
...The campaign for the main altar is a case in point...
...Its auditorium was the largest in the city in the 1870s and its natural history museum and library attracted visitors to Chicago...
...This was welcome news, considering that only eight months earlier Jesuit officials had announced their intention to raze the church...
...In the process, they might even be able to recapture Holy Family's legendary reputation as a place where, "The preaching was rated as the best in town, the music was of a very high order, and the people came from the North and South Sides, Catholics and Protestants, no matter how bad the weather...
...He made it clear in his report that the building project had not hampered either the spiritual development of the parish or ministry to the poor.'' Before we came here many of these people did not go to Mass on Sundays , few of them attended the sacraments....Now these vices have been almost entirely done away with and there reigns a fervor and devotion that are truly consoling and edifying...
...The majority of Holy Family parishioners felt betrayed by the discernment committee's refusal to discuss restoration of the church as a viable option...
...In city after city, immigrants and their children built beautiful churches that became the center of their community life...
...Remembered as a decrepit structure by generations of alumni, St...
...This year, the Jesuits financed the construction of brick townhouses on Taylor Street for faculty members at nearby St...
...In contrast to the European tradition of finding a single donor, Damen made the erection of the altar a common endeavor...
...But Damen understood the essential connection between church and community...
...In May of that year, he reported to his Jesuit provincial that "people are astonished that I can get money at all...
...What is the appropriate role of government agencies and public interest groups in resolving disputes over houses of worship...
...Are the glory days of Holy Family Church over...
...Answers to some of these questions may be found in the history of Holy Family parish...
...According to the Chicago Tribune, its interior was "the finest by far in this city," and possibly the United States...
...But the controversy surrounding its fate is more than just an argument over a historic building...
...On June 22, the parish council formally endorsed a plan to transfer ownership of the church to a not-for-profit corporation whose board of directors would have the power to restore the church and provide for its future maintenance and management...
...It seemed folly to spend upwards of $100,000 on a church building...
...On the contrary, a special concert was held in 1889 to celebrate the installation of incandescent lights...
...When Spine refused to consider the request, Holy Family parishioners began to call for his resignation...
...Ignatius has taken on a new identity as an architectural masterpiece, thanks to an ambitious fund-raising campaign that has realized more than $8 million...
...If St...
...THE BATTLE FOR HOLY FAMILY, CHICAGO ELLEN SKERRETT In historic Holy Family parish on Chicago's West Side, black, Hispanic, and Italian Catholics are waging a vigorous campaign to preserve their 128-year-old Gothic church...
...Considering the large number of Catholics who attend the university, the Newman Club will soon be taxed to the limit...
...Ignatius College Prep...
...Ignatius was a monumental structure, built for the generations...
...Damen approached fund-raising as a practical matter and as a way to build community...
...Ignatius now draws students (including women, since 1979) from Chicago's Gold Coast, as well as throughout the city and suburbs...
...When Arnold Damen, S.J., established Holy Family parish in 1857, the Near West Side of Chicago was mostly prairie...
...As emotions cooled, Holy Family parishioners reconsidered their pastor's report...
...Damen's correspondence with his superiors is a financial litany: the difficulty of collecting $30,000 in subscriptions for the new church...
...In 1907, new stained glass windows were installed, and the church interior was "put in fine order" in anticipation of the parish's fiftieth jubilee...
...Ignatius College...
...In announcing the decision at Sunday Mass, the pastor, William Spine, S. J., reminded his parishioners that people, not "stones and mortar," make a church...
...Perhaps because of their poverty, the parishioners were particularly sensitive to the need to create sacred space...
...This fall, the Chicago campus of the University of Illinois opened its first dormitory in the neighborhood, with accommodations for a thousand students...
...Ignatius College Prep, right next door...
...Even more important, a second anonymous donor appeared, promising to raise whatever money is necessary for full restoration of Holy Family Church on a 2-1 matching basis with the parish...
...Throughout the spring of 1988, Jesuit officials refused to meet with parish representatives...
...Since that time, many parishioners have continued to hope that their beautiful Gothic church may somehow be saved...
...American Catholics have become accustomed to hearing that the church is not a building but the People of God...
...ELLEN SKERRETT is co-author (with Dominic A. Pacyga) of Chicago: City of Neighborhoods (Loyola University Press, 1986...
...Are churches built by Catholic immigrants a legacy for the entire church or are they merely local institutions...
...But even after the collegiate division was transferred to Rogers Park on the far North Side in 1922, St...
...Although brick-and-mortar Catholicism always had its critics, the process did much to create and sustain the American Catholic church...
...A precedent for the restoration of Holy Family can be found at St...
...For centuries, Catholics have regarded their church buildings as powerful symbols of their faith...
...Finally, in 1869, Damen broke ground for St...
...They ranged from full restoration of the building to demolition...
...Within two weeks, an anonymous donor offered to pay for insurance costs and ceiling repairs so that Holy Family Church might be reopened...
...Ignatius continues its original mission...
...Undaunted by the Depression of 1857, Damen began a massive fund-raising campaign...
...Ignatius College weathered the rise and fall of Chicago's largest English-speaking parish...
...Once again a source of pride for residents of the Near West Side and the city at large, St...
...Newspapers were especially critical...
...and the size of the parish debt...
...Damen divided the parish into seventeen districts (something like the precincts of a city ward), each with its own "collector...
...Nineteenth-century newspaper accounts indicate just how profound an impact Holy Family Church had on the Near West Side of Chicago...
...More than eight hundred men and women responded to his appeal...
...Despite the population shift, Holy Family did not close its doors and there was no talk of replacing the Gothic church with a smaller, more economical structure...
...Can church restoration play a role in the redevelopment of city neighborhoods...
...Like the church, St...
...Since Vatican II, however, there has been a pronounced shift in emphasis...
...In size alone, Holy Family was to become the largest church in Chicago, with room for fifteen hundred worshipers...
...From a peak population of 20,000 in the 1880s, the parish lost nearly three-quarters of its families by 1909...
...Its intricate arches , turrets, and spires complement the church's Gothic design, and its magnificent angels and saints recall a rich and glorious Catholic past...
...They are relics of our immigrant past, monuments from an earlier era when American Catholics were defensive about their faith...
...These volunteers went door-to-door, soliciting their neighbors for money...
...On July 15, Robert A. Wild, S. J., the Chicago provincial, hailed the plan as unprecedented and appointed a Jesuit advisor "to fully support the restoration cause...
...Battle lines have been drawn since December 1987 when a parish discernment committee voted 6-4 to demolish the old church and replace it with a smaller "combination" building...
...On April 13, the parish council unanimously rejected the discernment committee's recommendation to replace Holy Family Church with a small modern worship center...
...Do religious orders and dioceses have an obligation to restore old churches when their congregations are overwhelmingly poor...
...In June 1984, the Jesuits closed the church building, citing falling plaster as a danger to worshipers...
...In little more than a decade, however, Holy Family parish supported three substantial schools: the "Brothers' School" for boys, St...
...Against overwhelming odds, they challenged the Jesuits' decision to raze their Gothic church...
...This was high praise, indeed, from a newspaper that had initially railed against Damen's plans...
...When the parish celebrated its 125th anniversary in 1982, the jubilee history noted: "our historic church building will soon be restored by the generous gift of the Chicago business community...
...According to several histories written by Jesuits, Holy Family parish has been in a state of decline for more than a century...
...Like Holy Family, St...
...Once hampered by its location in a poor neighborhood, St...
...To this day, their names (followed by the amount of each donation) are kept beneath the fifty-two-foot-high altar carved by Anthony Buscher, an immigrant German...
...As in most Catholic parishes established in the nineteenth century, elementary classes were held in makeshift quarters, pending the completion of a "permanent" church...
...Like generations of Catholics before them, the current two hundred and fifty parishioners of Holy Family regard it as a sacred space, a place of beauty in their lives and in their neighborhood...
...Ironically, the controversy over the fate of Holy Family Church conies at a time of unprecedented growth on the Near West Side...
...But Damen and his poor Irish congregation believed that the building of the church was a matter of pride for Catholics who lived in frame shanties without running water, plumbing, or heat...
...As early as 1886, the Chicago Mail noted that wealthy Chicago Catholics on the city's North and South sides declined to send their sons to school in a poor West Side neighborhood...
...Not since the Chicago campus of the University of Illinois was built on acres of urban renewal land in the early 1960s has there been so much construction in the neighborhood...
...Does a poor parish such as Holy Family really need an ornate Gothic church...
...It challenges deeply held beliefs about church and community, and raises important questions about the mission of the urban church...
...The church's tower was restored in 1983 (at a cost of $200,000), thanks to an anonymous donor, but the anticipated restoration of the church interior never occurred...
...Although Damen and his Jesuit assistants raised money by preaching missions in Chicago and other large cities, they relied heavily on Holy Family parishioners for the never-ending fund-raising campaigns...
...Today's conventional wisdom is that churches such as Holy Family have outlived their usefulness...
...When he accepted Bishop Anthony O'Regan's offer to make a foundation in Chicago in 1857, Damen announced his intention to establish both a church and a college...
...One account argued that Holy Family Church and its schools had been instrumental in "filling up [the Near West Side] with a dense and closely settled population-thus swelling the assessed value of the property by many millions (Continued on page 628) (Continued from page 623) and increasing the revenues of the city and county in a corresponding ratio...
...This institution, the forerunner of Loyola University, flanks Holy Family on the east...
...Holy Family is the second oldest church in Chicago and one of the few buildings in the city that predates the Great Fire of 1871...
...Yet he remained steadfast in his belief that the new brick church must be completed as soon as possible...
...Father Damen's choice of John M. Van Osdel as architect signaled his intention to build a church that would rival existing houses of worship...
...The Jesuits of Holy Family have a unique opportunity to renew one of Chicago's oldest parishes...
...This is no small feat, considering that the school is located just across the street from high-rise public housing projects...
...The elected parish council responded by holding meetings and seeking advice from local landmark preservation groups...
...The donor stipulated that the parish council secure a two-year "grace period" from their pastor to allow sufficient time for fund-raising...
...In America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, church-building was among the most important activities of Catholics...
...Fueling their anger was the fact that all five religious on the parish committee had voted to demolish the church...
...But the church would come first...
...With its Gothic arches, beautiful stained glass windows, and exuberant angels and saints, Holy Family was a singular place of beauty when solemnly dedicated in 1860...
Vol. 115 • November 1988 • No. 20
