{"id":5407,"date":"2006-10-08T11:40:46","date_gmt":"2006-10-08T11:40:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/remember-the-lights.html"},"modified":"2006-10-08T11:40:46","modified_gmt":"2006-10-08T11:40:46","slug":"remember-the-lights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/remember-the-lights.html","title":{"rendered":"Remember the lights?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago we discussed The Century in Which Catholic Churches discovered electricity – <\/a>and proceeded to line various architectural features with glowing bulbs, to various effects. <\/p>\n

The parish we usually attend here in the Fort has such an arrangement – bulbs that line the arches on the gothic altarpieces, as well as the tips of the many spires. The parish has finally created a website, and here’s a decent photo that gives you an idea of what it looks like: <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The lights are flicked on as Communion begins – producing great excitement among some in the congregation, who shall remain nameless.<\/p>\n

Here’s the page relating the history of the parish, a church which, like many, is located in a changing neighborhood.<\/a> The neighborhood was originally mostly German (as indicated by the German-language Stations), is now predominantly African-American. What the pastor has done though, is so interesting, and probably worth study. He has resolutely prioritized the maintenance of the historical nature of the church (he is diocesan historican, as well, and maintains the Cathedral Museum), but has been very involved in the revitalization of the neighborhood (which you can read about at that link) which, I want to stress, does not<\/em> involve gentrification and pricing residents out<\/strong>. It involves trying to attract businesses that people need, supporting a Head Start center, a branch of the library, as well as coming up with the rather brilliant idea of turning the school (closed in the early 70’s) into a low-income residence for the elderly called the Meetinghouse at St. Peter’s.  <\/p>\n

There are two Masses a weekend, both of which are about 2\/3 full. The collections are about $6000 a week. The pastor never, ever preaches money, there is never any big appeal for stewardship, etc. There is probably more that could be done – the music is fine and considerably more endurable than that which you find at other places, but it would be the perfect place (since the Cathedral, right down the road, is evidently uninterested) for a schola. <\/p>\n

But it is still a constant source of fascination to us how this parish manages to do so much (the roof is currently being replaced – a job costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I don’t think we ever heard a word asking for a dime for it) and remain a rather vibrant part of the neighborhood on the grand total of $6000 a week..<\/p>\n

Must be the lights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago we discussed The Century in Which Catholic Churches discovered electricity – and proceeded to line various architectural features with glowing bulbs, to various effects. The parish we usually attend here in the Fort has such an arrangement – bulbs that line the arches on the gothic altarpieces, as well as the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nRemember the lights? - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/remember-the-lights.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Remember the lights? - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A few weeks ago we discussed The Century in Which Catholic Churches discovered electricity – and proceeded to line various architectural features with glowing bulbs, to various effects. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5407\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}