Julie’s been busy this week­end fol­low­ing up on the ral­ly she attend­ed Fri­day, hook­ing up with all of the orga­niz­ing that’s hap­pen­ing to save St. Mary’s Church in Mala­ga NJ. She’s tak­en lots of pic­tures of St. Mary’s and yes­ter­day made up t‑shirts for the cause!
One pos­i­tive ele­ment to come of the Bish­op’s deci­sion to close down St. Mary’s and half the Catholic church­es in South Jer­sey is how parish­ioners are com­ing togeth­er for their church­es. Julie’s already typed in half of a 1997 his­to­ry of St. Mary’s onto the inter­net, and there are plans to inter­view elder­ly mem­bers, the old­est of whom remem­ber the church being built.
The sto­ry of a lit­tle church in a sleepy rur­al town is the real­ly the sto­ry of the Ital­ian Catholic expe­ri­ence in Amer­i­ca. There’s a cer­tifi­cate in the back of the church that lists all of the dona­tions that were col­lect­ed to build the church, some from dirt poor farm­ers who could­n’t even afford a dol­lar but still put all they could to build a house of worship.
To my Quak­er read­ers: don’t wor­ry, I’m not going Catholic on you all. It’s just that even I can tell there’s some­thing spe­cial about St. Mary’s and the devo­tion and the newfound-feistiness of it’s com­mu­ni­ty (how did they makes the Times?! And two pic­tures!). The bish­op wants to sell all these lit­tle rur­al church­es and replace them with imper­son­al mega-churches. The strug­gle for authen­tic­i­ty, human­i­ty and the remem­brance of the expe­ri­ence of those who strug­gled before us tran­scends reli­gious denom­i­na­tions. We’d all lose some­thing if church­es like St. Mary’s were all torn down to make way for more Super Wawa’s.

Tags: south­jer­sey, catholic, st mary’s, mala­ga, nj, dio­cese of cam­den, bish­op galiante, farm­ers, ital­ian, authenticity