{"id":7032,"date":"2004-07-12T00:02:22","date_gmt":"2004-07-12T00:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/07\/thats_one_way_to_cope.html"},"modified":"2004-07-12T00:02:22","modified_gmt":"2004-07-12T00:02:22","slug":"thats_one_way_to_cope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/07\/thats_one_way_to_cope.html","title":{"rendered":"That’s one way to cope"},"content":{"rendered":"

Parishioners of a closed Detroit parish continue to meet<\/a><\/p>\n

About 70 people sat under trees Sunday to celebrate the Mass on the Grass, as it was called, in between the golf course and the water park in Detroit’s Chandler Park.<\/p>\n

Seating was strictly BYO chair or blanket. A digital piano played over the hum of a small portable generator and the Rev. Ray Stadmeyer’s altar was a folding card table covered with a crisp, white cloth. Stadmeyer’s robes — khaki shorts and a T-shirt emblazoned with a church slogan — reflected the dress code for the day. <\/p>\n

The people attending were what remains of St. John Berchmans-St. Juliana parish in Detroit. Two weeks ago the Archdiocese of Detroit closed the church after a study found the parish was down to 150 or fewer members. <\/p>\n

Archdiocese spokesman Ned McGrath said the church’s finances had been deteriorating over the last decade. <\/p>\n

“They had to borrow $35,000 in June just to get to their closing liturgy to pay operating expenses,” McGrath said. “It was a pretty dire situation.” <\/p>\n

For the last two Sundays, the self-proclaimed “homeless Catholic church worshipers” have continued to gather for mass. Last week they were sandwiched between masses at Nativity of Our Lord Catholic Church. This week it was the park. Next week — who knows, church members said. <\/p>\n

“Everybody wants to stay together as a community,” said parishioner Steve Wasko of Detroit. “There is a bond here that closing the church won’t end. It’s unfortunate the church leadership downtown can’t see this.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Parishioners of a closed Detroit parish continue to meet About 70 people sat under trees Sunday to celebrate the Mass on the Grass, as it was called, in between the golf course and the water park in Detroit’s Chandler Park. Seating was strictly BYO chair or blanket. 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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\/7032","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=7032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7032\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}