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F e a t u r e A r t i c l e
OUR SHOP-AROUND NEIGHBORS
By JOHN J. MORAN
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This Rock
Volume 5, Number 5
 May 1994 
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Our new neighbors--the woman, particularly,
it seemed--had a problem.
"Can we help?"
We'd met the two, Walter and Marge, just the previous afternoon. Twenty
hours later, from their backyard sun deck, the four of us were charting
unfamiliar bird life.
Marge lowered her binoculars. Walter reached for his pipe.
"The church," Marge answered. "Which one is right for
us? So hard-hard-hard to decide!" Shrugging, glancing toward
her husband but getting no help there, she added, "We do
like to shop around, you know. We've been Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian--back
home . . ."
At the "back home" she gasped and abruptly thrust long
fingers across her mouth. In our new-found retirement community that
phrase is the worst of all no-nos. Whether arriving here from the
Northeast, Midwest, or elsewhere, this Sunbelt refuge is our home
now.
"We will join something," she said. "Won't we, Walter?"
"I suppose so," he said after an uncomfortable silence.
"Could help get us settled in--maybe."
Recalling the recent commitment my wife and I had made to the evangelism
effort in our parish, I noted that we were Catholic and that we'd
be pleased to have the two go with us to Mass the following Sunday.
That ended the discussion--not so much in the manner of its being
stomped on, as might have been the case a generation or two ago, but
more as if our offer would have us all pointlessly traveling a dead-end
road. It was Walter who changed the subject to the migratory habits
of yellow grosbeaks. "There goes a flock of them right now!"
he observed, although the rest of us, at that moment, must have been
looking somewhere else.
A few weeks later we learned that the couple had begun attending services
at a Congregational church, the decision apparently based largely
on "their wonderful choir!" A nearby Baptist church, second
in the running, lost out because its pastor was too vehemently "anti-cocktail."
We who have taken up new lives in this southern retirement haven are
escapees from northern winters and from taxes felt to be excessive
only until we'd left them behind. For those who do not strongly identify
with any one denomination, yet who, in a general way, consider themselves
Christians, the question of what church to join, if any, becomes part
of a psychic mix characterized by deep changes of many kinds. Even
the language here can be different. Example: "See you this evening"
translates as "See you at 2:00 this afternoon."
This is the Bible Belt, with a Baptist church, often quite small,
at nearly every crossroads. Several Protestant bodies with a common
presence in the North, including Dutch Reformed and Unitarian, are
hardly seen in these parts. The changes add up to a cultural shock
for Catholics and Protestants alike.
While our sun deck friends were joining a church for its outstanding
music, other recently-arrived shop-arounds were affiliating with "Bible-based"
churches for their preaching and fellowship, with the Seventh-Day
Adventists for their health regimen, and with a Presbyterian church
out of what may have been a sense of nostalgia. We know of few shop-arounds
who've chosen the Episcopalians, but none who've gone Catholic.
Why do these undecideds not choose us? From their perspective, insofar
as we can tell, such a step would be about on par with running naked
through our only shopping mall.
Do the attractions of music, preaching, and fellowship count for more
than historic validity? I put this question, expressed as ecumenically
as I could, to a new resident from upstate New York. He'd joined a
revivalist group here after finding a "Welcome Friend!"
packet in his mailbox and the pastor and pastor's wife standing at
his door proffering a fruit basket and a still-warm baked chicken.
"Now that's caring! That's fellowship!"
The true church, as he sees it, is the church, almost any church,
where fellowship prevails.
Most Catholic churches here are relatively small--parish size,
except in the largest cities, is typically below 250 families. Throughout
the region, our numbers, although increasing, are derived almost entirely
from Snowbelt-to-Sunbelt migration. Without that, many of our parishes
could accommodate their Sunday worshipers inside a broom closet.
Unencumbered by the massive size of so many northern parishes, we
are as well positioned for personal outreach as the majority of the
area's Protestant congregations. Often, what we could do, we don't
do.
Where a Protestant group will seek out names of newcomers, regardless
of what church affiliation may be indicated, then extend a personal
welcome, every Catholic parish we know of holds back until the newcomers
themselves take the first step by signing in at the rectory.
If we cannot do better than the others on fellowship, on preaching,
or on choir/congregational singing, what's left? What, if anything,
do we have to offer that the others do not?
The answer comes from a years-ago convert, one who brought himself
to us, rather than we to him: "What we have to offer is what
we don't talk about much anymore: Ours is the only church body that
goes back to the beginning. We, and none of the others, are the Church
in continuity since the time of the apostles, the very Church to which
Christ entrusted the keys of the kingdom. History supports this and
so does Scripture. If others fail to see us in this light, they will
evaluate us only on superficial or transitory considerations in which,
unfortunately, we're all too likely to fall short."
My wife and I have found few shop-arounds who dispute our Catholic
claim of uniqueness. What we do find is that almost no one seems even
to know about it. I brought up the issue of our apostolic origin when
a newcomer asked for "any reason why I ought to give you a try."
My response, structured on Matthew 16:18 ("You are Rock, and
on this rock I will build my Church") fell, initially anyway,
upon stony ground.
"The Catholic Church founded that long ago?" he asked. "That's
a new one on me!"
After jotting notations on slips of paper, he glanced up to announce
this conclusion: "I'd say you people probably got underway around
the twelve hundreds. Martin Luther came along in the fifteens. That
would allow three hundred years, more or less, for things to get where
they were until Luther started to straighten them out. If your church
were much older, the Luther types would have turned up sooner!"
Looking squarely at me, he declared, "I've never heard of such
a thing!"
"What thing?" I asked.
"That any of today's churches--well, except maybe the Baptists--goes
back to the beginning."
His response points to what, in this area, seems to be operating strongly
against our hope of attracting others. Lack of knowledge about the
Church and its teachings is pervasive among our shop-arounds. It's
deep and abiding.
As we work overtime in so many quarters to downplay our uniqueness,
seeking inter-faith harmony, we are viewed as merely another denomination,
even a sect. Our keystone role as the parent Church of Christendom
is not grasped at all by shop-arounds. It meets blank stares, divisiveness
now replaced by boundless ignorance.
Sometimes we lean so far backward on our ecumenical benches that we
contribute to this ignorance; I have in mind, for example, the totally
unamplified statement by a Catholic spokesman at an inter-faith seminar:
"We were once forbidden to read the Bible."
Common among shop-arounds is a view expressed by a widow, one of the
few natives to the area: "Really," she said, "is there
a peanut's worth of difference in what any of us believe? I don't
think so!"
Why not, then, consider us along with the others?
"Well," she explained, "I went to a wedding once in
your church." She laughed. "Those seats! Hard as settin'
on a rail fence. Give me a church with nice, comfy sit-downs!"
After a brief pause she added, "What else is there?"
John J. Moran freelances Columbus, North Carolina.
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