Lex Anteinternet: Churches of the West: Changes in Casper. A Lutheran College. A Methodist Church shutters its doors. The Ukrainian Mission finds a new church to use. What does this tell us?

Lex Anteinternet: Churches of the West: Changes in Casper. A Luthera...: 

Churches of the West: Changes in Casper. A Lutheran College. A Methodist Church shutters its doors. The Ukrainian Mission finds a new church to use. What does this tell us?

I recently posted this on our companion blog, Churches of the West; Churches of the West: Changes in Casper. A Lutheran College. A Methodi...: 

These are in interesting series of changes.  What can we learn from this (if anything)?

Changes in Casper. A Lutheran College. A Methodist Church shutters its doors. The Ukrainian Mission finds a new church to use.

There's been some interesting church changes in Casper, some of which deserve note, or additional note, here.

Here's the first.

Luther Classical College dedicates chapel, launches into first school year

The church it is using, when we first published a photograph of it, is here:

First Baptist Church, Casper Wyoming

This is the First Baptist Church in Casper, Wyoming. It's one of the Downtown churches in Casper, in an area that sees approximately one church per block for a several block area.

This particular church was built in 1949, and sits on the same block as Our Savior's Lutheran Church.

I wonder if that's correct and I actually took that photograph with 35mm film?

Anyhow, it was a Baptist Church at the time, and then became a wedding chapel.  Now, however, it belongs to Luther Classical College.  Apparently changes will be made to something.  “If you come back in a year from now, this will look very different,” according to the school's Professor of Theology. The church itself is being called a chapel, and will bear the name Wilhelm Löhe Chapel.  Next to it is a school building, where the classes will take place.  According to Oil City:

The school’s curriculum includes a heavy focus on Christian culture, mixed with classic liberal arts academic teachings similar to Hillsdale College. The four programs include a pre-seminary for future pastors, a classical school teacher program, a music major and a general Bachelor of Arts, he said. The school is also working with Casper College for two-year trade programs.

There's a lot of interesting things at work here, but they probably deserve comment in a different venue.

Another change occurred here:

Christ United Methodist Church, Casper Wyoming

Another one of the many Casper churches I hadn't gotten around to photographing, Christ United Methodist Church as photographed out my Jeep windshield. 

I don't know the history of this church but it likely dates to the 1950s.  It hasn't always been a Methodist church and in fact was part of a swap by this congregation for another building they had to another denomination as each of their respective buildings worked better for the other.

It's closed.

In both cases, I wonder what happened to the congregations of the churches that closed down.

In another change, the Ukrainian Catholic Mission to Casper now holds its services in the Anglican Church of the Resurrection.

Church of the Resurrection, Casper Wyoming

This church is of a very unusual style for this area, with the only church comparable to it, that I am aware of, being a Methodist church in Wheatland Wyoming.

I do not know the history of this building, but based upon its location, the church must have been built sometime between World War One and 1950. My guess is that it was built in the 1920s, but I do not know for sure.

Currently, this building is occupied by an Anglican Mission church, but it has not always been. Up until relatively recently the church was, I think, a Christian Scientist church. Christian Scientist structures seem to favor this Greek Revival style, as evidenced by the large First Christian Scientist church in Denver.

This is a really interesting decision on its part, and I'd like to know more of the background to it.

The Ukrainian Catholic Church is fully part of the Catholic Church, which makes me wonder why the Ukrainian mission doesn't hold its services in one of Casper's three Catholic Churches.  It might simply be because those parishes are so busy already.  The Ukrainian Mission seems to hold Divine Liturgy mid afternoon on Saturday's (which at least for the Latin Rite, wouldn't serve a vigil mass) and that would definitely conflict with the Reconciliation schedules for all three Latin Rite churches.  

The choice of an Anglican Church, however, is interesting as Anglicans tend to believe that they're part of the Catholic Church as well, which they are not.  It's not surprising that they'd offer their structure accordingly, and the architecture of this church would somewhat lend to an Eastern Rite service.

Let's start with, maybe, the easy one, the closure of the Baptist Church.

There are other Baptist Churches in Casper, so it's not as if the Baptist have disappeared, but to have the first Baptist Church go away, particularly a downtown Church, is fairly phenomenal.  Looking at the number in Casper, however, I doubt that this reflects any major demographic change.  The church is fairly small inside and being located downtown, it was likely not the first choice for a lot of Casper's Baptists.  It is also an old structure, and those are hard to keep up.

It's 1949 construction made sense, but frankly, it's closure a few years ago does as well.  I've actually been a bit surprised that a nearby Lutheran Church hasn't closed, but it seems to be doing well.   That would be this church here:

Our Savior's Lutheran Church, Casper Wyoming

Our Savior's Lutheran Church is on the same block as the First Baptist Church, also pictured on this blog. This is the smallest of the downtown churches, with an interior area that is relatively small in this traditionally styled church.

The church was built in 1950, one year after the First Baptist Church on the same block. This construction is late compared to other downtown Casper churches.

In 2014 this church added a sculpture, as part of a Boy Scout Eagle Scout project which is a Maltese Cross if viewed from the side, but is the Ichthys symbol if viewed straight on. Very nice addition.

Many years ago I defended a lawsuit in which a bicyclist was injured when the cap came off of his mountain bike shocks while riding down the stairs that are on the back of this church. The defendant was a bicycle shop, not the church.

Updated:  December 7, 2014.

Maybe the fact that this Lutheran Church seems to be doing well and the Baptist structure and school were available explains the new Lutheran college opening up on that location.

Casper, it might be noted, already had a Lutheran K through 12 school, Mt. Hope.  Somehow, I have failed to photograph that church, which I'll need to correct.  

I don't think of Casper being a big Lutheran town, but there are in fact several.  I've known various individuals who are Lutherans here, so maybe they were just sort of flying under the wire, or not very noisy, so to speak.  But they are here, and are represented by two synods.  

Of those I've known who are Lutherans here, if I know them well, most of them had roots in the prairie states.  Nebraska, North Dakota, etc. That makes sense as well.  I think of those states as having sizable Lutheran populations due to German and Scandinavian immigrant populations of prior decades.

The new Lutheran college here notes that it has a Hillsdale related program.    Hillsdale has become a force in really conservative education.  It's centered on programs developed by Hillsdale College in Michigan, that being a Baptist college, but like the Boy Scouts of America in its day, Hillsdale programs seem to be capable of being adapted to any conservative religious group.  

Casper's Wyoming Classical Academy, a charter school in Casper (state funded) is a Hillsdale elementary school.  The school district here already had Casper Classical Academy as a middle school, and one of the elementary schools in our school of choice system has a reputation as being so socially conservative that you'll frequently here people refer to it as the "public private religious school".

No religious education can take place in a public school, of course, but when you look at the backers of these schools, there's a strong religious element to it, although the students aren't the members of any one religion, and some probably aren't members of any religion in particular.  The new charter school had a pretty strong Mormon backing and its interesting to note that the LDS do not seem to have grade schools of their own.  Lots of religions do, and as noted the Lutherans have one in Casper, K-12.  The Catholic Tri Parish has a large K-9 school, probably the biggest Christian school in town.  A non denominational Christian school, Paradise Valley (named for the subdivision, and the Paradise Valley Christian Church which sponsors it, has been in existence since 1978.

Anyhow, Hillsdale has a "great books" theme to it, and that makes me a bit nervous.  I'm odd, as a social conservative, that while I think the great books are important, I fear such educations may be limiting, and intentionally so.

I'd note that Wyoming Catholic College in Lander also has a great books, or classical education, focus.

Stepping away from the religious aspect of this, for a second, part of this fits into the warp and woof of the times.  Lots of populist who think they're conservatives are only cultural American Christians, in reality.  Indeed, at least one couple I know that are sending their children to the WCC never darkened the door of a church while I knew them.  I'm sure they regard themselves as Christian, but in the American sense where your Christianity really doesn't have to burden you.  A lot of American Christians fit into that category.

Looked at this way, the outright religious schools may be a very positive trend.  The problem with secular schools taking the Hillsdale route is that without a religious element to the education, it really makes no sense.  You can't instill values based on values.  A philosophy that lacks the existential is just a bunch of opinions, in other words.

Conversely, I worry about the education at the k-12 level being much to narrow, and perhaps even a bit propagandistic.  I don't worry about that with schools sponsored by the Apostolic Faiths, as its demonstratively not that way.  But this isn't necessarily the case with every religion backed school either.

Anyhow, all this fits into the same trend that home schooling does.  Starting as a reaction to educational environments in the 1970s, in part due to a decay in schools in some places, and in part due to the advancement of science which was reflected in science teaching in schools, this movement really spread in recent years.  Wyoming's schools have always been excellent, but even here there was a reaction and an underlying feeling in some quarters that teachers had "liberal" or "progressive" views they were foisting on children.  There's really no evidence of this in the state, but it's even reached up in some quarters into the state's sole university where you have a few student activists that are convinced all of their teachers are Karl Marx.

Well, what about the Methodist Church closing?

Methodist in general don't get much notice here.

There's a really big Methodist church in downtown Casper and I think its the only Methodist Church in Casper now.

First United Methodist Church, Casper Wyoming

This church is located completely downtown, across from the Natrona County Public Library. It's exterior is deceptive in that the church is not as large as it might appear, as the church building includes interior rooms used by the church. The church itself is joined to a new meeting area off to the right.

Two tones of brick featured on the church suggest that it might have been built in two stages, or perhaps three, but I do not know this to be the case. The corner stone gives three dates, with the first being 1907, the second 1927, and the third 1951, so presumably this was the case.

That church was built as early as 1907 and then expanded twice more, the last time in the 1950s, so it must have been doing fairly well, but Methodist could never have had the sort of numbers that the Lutherans obviously have or had, or that the Episcopalians have or had.  And that makes sense, really, as the Methodists are, originally, an offshoot of the Anglican Communion.  That they ever had a second church is a little surprising, and it probably reflects population expansion.

I've known just a handful of Methodists over the years.  Some are people that I'm related to, and they weren't really practicing Methodists.  I think in their case, although I don't know for sure, that was due to the matriarch of the family who had moved in from Nebraska.  Living a very rural life, like a lot of Wyoming ranch families, religious observation was sparse.

The only other Methodist I can think of was the daughter of the pastor at the church depicted above.  She was really nice, but sort of a wild kid, so it was a surprise to realize that her father was the pastor.

Anyhow, the closure of the noted Methodist church in this story here really probably is demographic.  The Episcopal Church continent wide has been suffering parishioner loss, and that's likely what happened here.

Whatever the story is elsewhere, and some of it may have jumped the shark, that doesn't seem to be happening to the Lutherans or the unaffiliated Protestants here locally.  

Nor to the Anglicans, whose numbers are small, but which are still large enough to support two churches.  That's interesting.

Conservative by their very nature, the fact that one of the two Anglican Churches would host the Ukrainian Orthodox Church makes some sense in an odd way.  Anglicans of this type generally believe that they are Catholic.  Depending on the approach that they take, some believe themselves to be sort of a church in seperation, like the Orthodox Churches are, while some believe that they're fully Catholic. The Catholic Church, of course, does not so regard them. Where this church in particular fits in, I don't know.  Sort of interestingly, I knew, sort of the Episcopal Priest who left St. Mark's downtown in order to form this congregation, which he could no longer reconcile his positions with the Episcopal Church, and therefore I know that he was raised as a Lutheran.  Some Lutherans are not only very conservative, but they approach the views, but don't quite make them, of the Anglicans in their concept of where they fit in the overall "one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic  Church", spectrum.  Indeed, as I've noted somewhere, the most "Catholic" homily I've ever heard at a wedding was by a very blunt Lutheran minister.

Church of the Holy Family, Anglican Church, Casper Wyoming.

This is the first church we've added from South Casper. There are several churches in this district, which border being outside of the city limits, and in one case actually are outside the city limits.

This is the Anglican Church of the Holy Family. It's a log structure, a not uncommon style in Wyoming but this one, from the exterior, lacks some of the features we'd normally expect on a church.

Generally, as this blog is limited to architecture, and not theology or doctrine, no comment has been made on those topics anywhere here on this blog. Here a slight exception will be made as while this church is officially called the Church of the Holy Family, the sign for the church points to "Holy Family Anglican Catholic Church". This is not a Roman Catholic Church, and is not claiming to be one, nor is it a Catholic Church featuring "Anglican Use". As those who have followed these topics are aware, some formally Episcopal or Anglican parishes have come into the Roman Catholic church with the "Anglican Use", i.e., preserving the Book of Common Prayer.

This is a bit of a confusing topic, but generally what this story reflects is the development of a centuries old dispute in the Episcopal Church about the degree to which the Episcopal Church claims to be Protestant, or Catholic. The dispute is an internal one, and the Episcopal Church is not regarded as Catholic by any of the Catholic Rites nor by the Catholic Church itself. The Episcopal dispute has become particularly acute in recent years, resulting in some formerly Episcopal churches separating themselves with the distinction of naming themselves Anglican or Anglican Catholic, thereby signalling that they view themselves as looking to the theology of the Catholic Church rather than to Protestant theologies and that they regard developments in the Episcopal Church in chief (or the Anglican Communion in chief) sufficient distressing that they are separating from what would otherwise be the local Bishops, and aligning themselves with Bishops who hold their views. In Casper, this has lead to the interesting situation in which there are now two Anglican churches, (the other being the Church of the Resurrection) but they are not aligned with the same Bishops.

This note was added not to enter this dispute, but so as to make sure that this entry isn't confusing for Anglicans, should they stop by, nor for Catholics, should they stop by, as this Church is not regarded as a Catholic Church by Catholics, and it is one of two Anglican Churches in Casper.

Having said that, one thing I've never been able to quite grasp about the Anglicans is why they don't just become Catholic.  Their services are very close to the Latin Rite's and they very clearly believe that being an Apostolic Church is not only a good thing, but necessary, just as the Catholics and Orthodox do.  I guess the answer is that they firmly believe that they are, but you would think that they'd wish to resolve any doubt, particularly as there's now a way to do that and preserve those things uniquely Anglican, like the Common Book of Prayer, within the Catholic Church.

Anyhow, Casper has two Episcopal Churches as well as the Episcopal Diocesan headquarters, and then two Anglican Churches as well.  It's interesting that there are more Lutheran churches than Episcopal ones, but one of the Episcopal churches is a very large church.  The Episcopal Church, of course, has suffered from demographic attrition in recent decades which its split is part of, in that it was at one time the major Mainline Protestant church in the country, and the church in which monied people were most likely to be found.  As it moved to the left culturally over the last couple of decades its parishioners have left it.

Wyoming State Of The State 2024. Opening Prayer by Rev. Tammy Dewey.

I wouldn't normally give a review of an opening session of the legislature's prayer, but Rev. Tammy Dewey of St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Casper did a particularly nice, and very Christian one, here.  It starts at about 12:29.

Minor Irritants

My home Parish, 1958.  This was before I was born.  It was also before the architectural insult of removing the alter rails occurred in the 1970s.

I was originally going to post this at our companion blog Lex Anteinternet, as some of the observations have general application and this is more of the type of thing I tend to publish there, but in thinking about it, as it involves observations derived at Mass, and because it also in part involves architecture, I'm going it here instead.  This is, therefore, one of our few real departures from the general theme of this blog, which is photography related in the main.

I'm attuned, I suppose, to the spoken word in part due to my occupation, which involves speaking a lot, as well as writing. Therefore, perhaps, in some ways I might be viewing this matter from a prospective that's more out of the past than the present, as to how most people perceive the world, although I don't think so.  I give that by way of a caveat.

Also as a caveat, I'm in my mid 50s, and I'm in a high stress occupation, which can make me really cranky.  As a Catholic in my mid 50s, I've now sat through, but not appreciated until much later, the changes brought about by the "spirit of Vatican II" and I frankly don't like most of them.  That's a view that I've come to over the years and feel more now that I'm in my mid 50s than I did in about them in my mid 20s when I was aware, but barely aware, of them.  That may be because I now have a deeper appreciation of quite a few things and a better appreciation of the history of things, let alone the direction of things, than I did back then.  That doesn't really place me in the "Trad" camp in the Catholic world, and certainly not in the "Rad Trad" camp, but I can see the Trad camp, I suppose, from where I'm camped.

And from where I'm camped I've viewed certain things come into the churches that ought to go right back out.  So here goes.

The late announcements.

If you want to totally destroy any audience recollection of what you have just said in an assembly of any sort, put some announcements at the end of your assembly.

This applies to any sort of assembly.

The Catholic Mass is a type of assembly and an ancient one.  It's basic form has existed the entire length of Christianity and it features two principal aspects.  One is the reading or readings, and the second one is Holy Communion. The readings lead up to Communion.

In its common form, in all Rites, and beyond the Catholic Church in all Apostolic Churches and those which claim Apostolic succession, there's a central reading followed by a homily.  In the current Latin Rite, there's a reading from the Old Testament, from the Psalms, from the New Testament, and the main reading from the Gospels.  Then there's the homily.  The readers are selected so that they're tied together in some fashion.  They lead up to the homily, and then that is followed by Holy Communion.  There's some short aspects of the Mass following the homily, followed by the dismissal of the congregation, which is done with the worlds "The Mass has ended, go in Peace."

If the homily is effective, it should remain on your mind on the way out of the Church.  If it isn't, at the readings out to.

They probably won't if just before dismissing the congregation there's the "please be seated for just a few announcements".

Human beings are set by their nature to receive a main message.  Once its received, it's received.  They aren't set by their nature to receive auxiliary messages after that.  If they receive them, they delete the first one.

In spite of this being really obvious, if you have ever experienced it, in recent years Catholic parishes where I've gone to Mass have become absolutely chronic about tail end messages. So much so, that some of them start to become auxiliary homilies.  The number of extra speakers that come up to the ambo to deliver a message to the congregation, frequently delivered by somebody who has absolutely no public speaking skills whatsoever, is at an all time high.  And the Priests themselves have taken up delivering all sorts of messages just before they dismiss the congregation.  Perhaps the most frequent of those messages, and in some ways the most insulting, is the extraordinarily irritating habit of reading bits of the bulletin to the congregation. 

On that last item, I was an early reader and ever since then I've hated to be read to.  I know how to read.  Reading out loud is for those who can't read.  Reading a bulletin is an implicit suggestion that the congregation isn't reading the bulletin.  Why should it, it the Priest is going to read the important parts, by his definition, to you before he dismisses the congregation?

Anyhow, any more it's not uncommon to go to Mass, be standing for the dismissal be told to sit, have one speaker come up on something like Marriage Encounter, or enrolling your kids in school, or encouraging people to join the youth group, or go to some function, followed perhaps by an additional auxiliary message from the Priest, and then highlights of the bulletin. By the time that's been done, the homily is completely lost.

Think about it, if your parish was to receive a letter from St. Paul today, you'd be eager (and given the nature of St. Paul's letter, likely a bit scared), to hear them.  It's easy to imagine the Priest or Deacon standing up and trembling a bit and saying "now we're going to hear a letter from St. Paul".  If that happened, you'd probably solemnly go up to Communion after that, be dismissed, and go home thinking about it for the rest of the week.

What wouldn't occur is that the Priest would stand up and say, please be seated we have . . . and two boring speakers stood up and droned on about something followed by the Priest reading the bulletin.

But that's exactly what's occurring on most Sundays.

We'd note that its actually contrary to the rubrics.  Announcements are supposed to come before the Mass. 

Not after.

The Screens

Humans are evolved for the reception of oral information.  Early on, we learned how to write and read, but receiving information in that fashion is much more recent.

Up above I stated I hate to be read to, and I do. But one thing about most writing is that it isn't designed to be read to an audience.  Ancient texts, however, are as they were written at at time in which most people couldn't read.  Indeed, they were often written by a scrivener who received dictation from somebody who could neither read nor write, so the messages were often sent by somebody who couldn't read or write and received by somebody who couldn't read or write and in both instances require the assistance of somebody who could do both.

The text of the Bible, in the Mass, can and should be effectively delivered orally, as the homily should as well.  The entire Mass is immediate sensory, involving your direct listening and often, depending upon the right, various distinct sounds and smells.

Contrary to what some churches apparently like to believe, and what many lawyers and courts have come to believe, what people don't do well is receive information second party via screens.

Every since the 1960s there's been the idea around that because television and movies (and now video games) are so common, people must receive information in that fashion.  In reality, they tune most of that out.

Proof of that is ample.  For one thing, it's really difficult to tune out an effective speaker if you are in the same room as that speaker.  It's easy to tune out a boring speaker, but its easy to tune out anything that's boring.  Tuning out video and screen received information is really easy however.

Indeed, there are a lot of people who turn on televisions for "background noise".  I absolutely hate that, but it's really common.  There are plenty of people who turn the television on the second they get up and keep it on until they go to sleep without ever really watching anything its playing (again, that really annoys me). 

This is also true, I'd note, of second person sound delivered by some medium such as radio.  If you want to listen, you will, but there are a lot of people who turn on the radio and never listen to it.  Personally, I can't stand to have the radio on at all when I'm working and as a result I've had more than one occasion where I've had to tell secretaries to turn their radios down, as I could hear them in my office.  A former partner of mine, in contrast, bought an expensive speaker set for his work computer (I now have it) as he'd play music all day long.

Anyhow, if you really want people to be distracted and/or bored, bring in a screen.

Screens in churches exist in two forms. One is the old slide screen, now commonly used for a video presentation. Video presentations delivered in churches nearly uniformly feature bad production values and horrible audio, so they are ineffective.  They usually are in aid of some campaign, but they aren't convincing for that reason.  Additionally, as the person who controls the presentation in the church usually has the same technical skills as teachers in classrooms who use the same technology, either problems showing the presentation or constant messing with the audio is nearly inevitable.

There are exceptions to this.  Our local Parish has been featuring a series on the Mass that it has been showing before Mass commences and it has been excellent and engaging.

The other type of screen is the television type screen.

A beautiful church across town, where I'll now be attending on Sundays due to a schedule change at my old parish, has been wounded there by the inclusion of screens bolted to the walls.  They serve no purpose whatsoever other than to put up a selection words here and there for the readings and then a picture or pictures for the homily.

That really needs to be stopped.

All that does is distract and again, it's insulting to the congregation.  It really isn't hte case that they were ignoring the engaging Priest there with his deep booming voice.  He didn't need the electronic aids and it actually detracts from his presentation, as it would anyone's.

Not thinking things out

I have to be careful on this one as it could sound like I'm saying something that I'm not.

When I was really young my family attended an early Sunday morning Mass.  I've been told how early it was, and it was early.

Later on, we attended the Saturday evening Mass.  I guess this was done as we weren't doing anything on Saturday evening and this was a convenient way to attend Mass and leave all of Sunday open to do whatever.  When I was in university I normally attended the Saturday evening Mass for the same reason, or simply because I was acclimated to it. When I moved back to town and got married, we did as well.

When the kids were born we switched to the across town Parish as it had a better cry room.

Later, however, we started attending the Sunday morning early mass again, which was at 7:30 at that point.  I can't recall quite why, but it was likely because after that the kids attended the Catechism class that was held at the old Catholic school on Sundays, so it worked out really well.  As they grew older and processed through that, we kept going to the Sunday morning Mass.

One Priest moved the time of that Mass to 8:00.  That was fine.  Recently the new Priest has moved it to 9:00.  The 11:00 Mass, which is later than I normally ever go to, has been moved to 11:30, and is now the Spanish Mass.  The late Sunday Mass at 5:15 and the Saturday evening Mass at 5:15 remain in the same positions.

All of this makes a huge amount of sense and it reflects a demographic shift in the Parish.  I think the decisions to change the times was fully warranted.  Indeed, back some years ago when I attended a special meeting of parishioners it struck me that it made no sense that in a town of our size, which sin't small but isn't gigantic, it didn't make sense to have three churches with Saturday evening Masses (which still is the case) and two that offered early Sunday morning Mass.  Indeed, taking a Medieval view of things I'd tend to have consolidated all three Parishes into the "Tri Parish" that they technically are.

Be that as it may, it has a direct impact on me, and now I'll go across town. For a guy who routinely wakes up as early as 3:00 a.m., 9:00 a.m. is fairly late.

None of that is my point.

All this came about for two reasons, both of which are demographic and one of which is due to poor planning.

The downtown Parish, where I attend, was the founding church in the county.  All the other churches were founded by it.  When the second church was built across town,t hat church was bigger, but the downtown church was still very large.  The third one is much smaller.

All three had school buildings on their grounds, but only one school actually existed. That school dated to the 1920s, I think, and was one black away from the downtown church.  It was the central Catholic school for the town.

Now, I n ever went there and I don't have any romantic feelings about it. But I do grasp the demographic realities of schools.

When the downtown church was built, it was the only Catholic church in town, which it still was at the time the school was built.  AS the town expanded, however, a second church was built on the east side of town, and it is larger.  It's a beautiful church.

The obvious intent was for it to have its own school, but Catholics are a minority population here and therefore there was never a sufficient Catholic population base that would have justified that.  Indeed, the struggle for many years was to keep the existing school viable.  For the same demographic reasons, two other religious schools, one Lutheran and one of a Calvinist variety, are present in town, even though there's more than one church for each respective group that provides the population base for the schools.

All that was fine but in the 1990s a very generous donor family granted a very large sum of money just to build a school  It was really needed as well as the old school was now very long in the tooth and had the problems that all old buildings have.

What was determined to be done was to build a school on the very expansive grounds of the small mid town church on the west side, as it had the grounds.  That was done, and the old school was closed.

That was a mistake.

The problem with that decision was an absolute failure to grasp demographics.  The downtown parish, the oldest one, was the largest because it was the first and it had the school.  Over time, the east side parish probably had more people who attended it, but the numbers were close.  The mid town church, on the other hand, was small and more of a neighborhood church. 

When the downtown church was built, a century ago, the town was around 20,000 in population and the nicest part of town was in fact close to it.  It's location meant that a high percentage of school age children could walk to it, something that is made more evident by the fact of a major public grade school being just one block away, and the town's then only high school being about four blocks away.  By  the 1970s, however, that was less and less true and more people likely lived on the east side of town.  Kids got to the school by their parents taking them there, which if you went by early in the morning was pretty clear.

The location really had its drawbacks.  It didn't have an expansive modern playground and it evolved into being right on the edge of the busy downtown.  But it was one block away from the oldest downtown church and the kids who went to the school went to Mass at that Parish. So did their parents, who tended to keep going there as those kids grew up.

Once the school was closed, however, that ended.  Kids went to the mid town Parish, which was on the same grounds.  Their parents no longer went to the downtown Parish either, either going to the mid town church or to the one on the east side, close to where it was located.

That this would have occurred should have been evident.  None the less, the mistakes were compounded.  The old school building, which was still used for a time for various church functions including religious education, was sold.  The neighboring convent, which had once housed nuns who taught at the school (which had ended long before the school was closed) was also sold.  Religious education was moved to a building that once housed the Knights of Columbus, between teh church and the school, after the Knights moved to the east side church.

And with all of that, predictably, the church lost a lot of Parishioners.

The ones it didn't loose, however, were Hispanic.  The reasons aren't really clear but its most likely due to most of them being newer residents of the town. As they moved into town, they looked for a parish, and the downtown one is by far the easiest to find.  And as its centrally located, it's easy to get to.

Not that any of the local churches are hard to get to, and that's one of the challenges the downtown church faces. They're all fairly easy to get to, but the other two are right on the edge of residential areas whereas the downtown parish is right at the edge of the downtown.  They're all on the borders, however, of residential areas.

The downtown parish, however, is a lot easier to get to if you live in the town that borders this one immediately to the north, which is all middle class housing.  It's also really close to another neighboring town that likewise has a strong working class base, and it's not hard to get to from a third town that meets that category.  It's by far the easiest to get to for people who live in the oldest sections of the town that are very much in a working class district.  Anyway you look at it, it's well situated for a new community that's comprised of working people.

All the parishes have people who meet that definition and indeed Catholicism in Wyoming has always had s strong working class element to it.  But another added element to it is that if you are part of a new demographic to an area, you are part of a "community" in a unique way.

In recent years I've heard a lot in Catholic circles about "building community".  I frankly think the entire concept is grossly misunderstood in some ways. All Catholics are part of a unique community simply by being Catholic, and usually only people who are very poorly Catechized or who were Protestants for most of their life really don't have the sense of the Catholic Community. That's part of what makes being  a Catholic really unique.  Catholics have a sense of the near, the far, and the supernatural.  When Catholics refer to "the communion of the Saints", they have the sense of the Saints being with us in the present time.  Our distinction between the living and the dead is much slighter than other people.  And likewise, as we're part of the Universal Church, which is what "Catholic" implies, we feel as much as part of a church across the world in many ways as we do to our own.  Only when the local churches disrupt that do we feel ill at ease.

Indeed, a lot of Catholics never register at a parish, and are called "vagabondi" in terms of Canon Law.  This isn't a weird concept for Catholics and actually the phrase "joining a church" that Protestants use is hopelessly bizarre to Catholics.

But for recent immigrant populations, they are a special kind of community and that plays in here as well.  Speaking a different language and coming from a different culture, they'll tend to go to one church as its where they are most at home, even if it involves some inconvenience.

None of this is wrong or a problem, and indeed the Church and the Parish is right to react to serve them, so that they are served. And by changing a Mass time to the middle of Sunday, that makes a lot of sense. The prior Spanish Mass was only twice a month and in the middle of Sunday afternoon, which made sense at the time but no longer does. Further, a Hispanic youth group leader has stepped forward and volunteered to serve in that capacity and, beyond that, some Spanish speaking nuns from Mexico have arrived in town.

All that points in a very clear direction and it makes sense. But there's a risk running there as well.  In the thinking things out area, hopefully this has been done.

Closing the school detached people from the downtown church and reattached them either to the small neighborhood church which is near the school or to the big across the town church near where man of them lived.  That this would occur was inevitable and should have been appreciated from the start.  The subsequent selling of the old school and the convent that followed was an incredibly bad mistake that deprived the old downtown church of two major items of infrastructure. Selling real property is nearly always a horrifically bad idea, and its one the Parish did over the protest of a lot of people who had a romantic attachment to their old school. That romantic attachment was wrong, but the selling of the property was even worse.  

All that left the downtown parish with a population of parishioners who either went there out of long habit (like me), personal taste (probably also partially me), because they lived nearby (which almost made them older by default, with rare exceptions), or they were part of a unique demographic.

The remaining parishioners today, therefore, are not likely to be the ones with young kids, except for Hispanic families.  The exception to that was the 11:00 Mass which was attended by a lot of people with families.  If those families don't speak Spanish, most of them will not go elsewhere.  Not due to prejudice, but because they won't easily understand what's being said at Mass.

If the overall idea is that the Parish will simply become an Hispanic one, that will probably fail. Even with the increased number of Hispanic Catholics in town, they're still not numerous enough to carry a Parish on their own, unless the Church is successful in getting a lot of quasi observant Hispanic Catholics to attend.  It might, but that will be difficult.

That's probably part of the goal, and maybe they'll be able to do it. If that's the plan, they need to dive full in and not try to make any compromises at all.  It'll be tough, however, as right now while there are many, many, highly observant Hispanic Catholics in our culture, the results of the Mexican Revolution are still being recovered from in regard to this.  The Mexican government was bitterly hostile to Catholicism for decades and ultimately produced a result much like that produced by the Russian Revolution in which people remain attached to their faith, but in a looser fashion than had been the case prior to the suppression.  As with the many Russians who remain highly loyal to the Russian Orthodox Church, and the many Ukrainians who remain loyal to the Ukrainian Catholic Church, there are many Mexicans who remain loyal to the Roman Catholic Church. There are also, however, a lot whose affiliation is much looser.  They're Catholic, but their attendance tends to be light.  Overcoming that would in fact be a huge triumph and would fill the church at every Mass, but it will be tough to accomplish.

If it isn't accomplished, what will occur is that the non Spanish speaking Parishioners will go to another church and most will take their financial support with them to that new Parish.  Right now, for example, I remain registered at the downtown Parish and when I go there I make my donation. But now I'm mostly going across town due to the Mass times.  I may re-register and if I don't, it's only out of a sense that my old downtown Parish should retain some loyalty from me.  But most won't view it that way and will feel that their loyalty and support should go to the Parish where they attend.

There are things that could be done and could have been done to stem this, but they weren't thought out.  I'll get to some of those in just a moment, but a lot of this goes back to the school. The school was in really bad shape, but it didn't need to come down.  It didn't. It was renovated into apartments as was the old convent.  That no doubt took a lot of money, but the point is that the downtown parish had an infrastructure that was available.  It sold it.

After it was sold some Catholic home schoolers made a move to try to establish a Catholic high school here.  It fell flat.  I don't think that would have been a good idea, but one of the things that made it absolutely impossible is that it would have entailed building another school building.  Such a school would never have had a large number of students, so ironically the existing building, particularly if considered in the context of the neighboring convent, would have sufficed, with remodeling, for that.  

Those structures could have also served other purposes, including allowing the convent to be a convent.  For some reason people's sense of the time doesn't tend to extent beyond the immediate and it was apparently believed there'd never be nuns here again. Well, even since the convent closed there has been from time to time, and there are once again.  

A page probably could have been taken here from the Episcopal Diocese for Wyoming which ultimately moved its offices to Casper rather than retain them in Laramie. Why Laramie was chosen for the Episcopal Cathedral in the first place makes for an interesting topic, but it was a poor choice right from the onset.  Moving the offices to Casper made sense, and frankly they ought to just make their large downtown church an auxiliary cathedral.

That's also what should have been done to the downtown parish.  Business offices are presently in Cheyenne, as is the beautiful cathedral, which does make sense. But frankly Cheyenne as the state capitol doesn't make sense as its practically in Colorado and Nebraska. No state would locate its capitol in a corner of the state if it had the choice and Cheyenne being the state capitol is an accident of history.  The choice of Cheyenne as the location for the Catholic Cathedral makes sense, but it means that the bishop has double to triple the normal amount of ground to cover that he ought to.  Making Casper the auxiliary seat would make sense.

It still would, but clearly things aren't headed that way.  It would have made more sense but for the shortsighted sale of all the real property.

I hope the changes work out and I agree with their being made. But my suspicion is that they won't work out well.  Probably the main body of remaining parishioners who aren't Hispanic will relocate if they're not older parishioners, and even if they are and they were going to the 11:00 Mass.  They same groups will remain if they're older at the now 9:00 Mass, Saturday 5:15 Mass and Sunday 5:15 Mass.  But over time, unless the change is hugely successful, I suspect that this will put the Parish in a financial bind and won't be the last of the changes that will be forthcoming.

People who supported moving the school, and selling it, should have seen that coming.

Making It Impossible To Go To Mass

I've talked about Mass times a lot in the item above, so it would seem I wouldn't have a lot to add, but I do.  It just doesn't relate to Sunday.  Well, not much.

I think one of the things that is sometimes not grasped by those who set Mass times is that Wyoming is incredibly working class in a unique way.  Lots of people work six days out of seven if not seven out of seven, by necessity.  Getting to Mass for them is an effort in and of itself, but most make it.  

That means, however, that a lot of people are getting Mass in prior to or after something that they're otherwise fitting in, often by necessity.  Getting to Mass should be the priority, and for most it is, but the reality of their lives means that simply getting to Mass can be an effort that it isn't for people who live in Denver.

I'll go so far as to state for people who work six days out of seven, that may simply include trying to have some downtime on Sunday. That sounds absolutely awful, but in a really rural state with really hard working conditions, that's true.  Lots of families live in a situation in which the breadwinner or winners work six days out of the week, go to Mass on Sunday, and then head out to go fishing or hunting for the rest of the day, or any number of things like that.

Pushing Mass into later in the day makes it hard to do that.  Of course, there's always Saturday evening's Mass, the mass of Anticipation. But frankly if you worked all day on Saturday, and lots of people do (I do most Saturdays), by evening you are pretty beat.  

I note this as the later Mass is on Sunday morning the more likely it is that the observant will simply end up with the classic American (Protestant) lazy Sunday.  

Some people really like that idea, but it's not the regional idea of how things work.  Wyoming has actually always been the least observant state, in terms of religion, in the United States and this is part of the reason why.  The whole idea of getting up late, getting dressed up, going to church, going to lunch (or the detestable brunch) and then spending the rest of the day doing nothing doesn't appeal to a lot of people here, particularly locals.  If you go to an 8:00 Mass in the summer you'll see vehicles that are clearly going right out to the prairie after Mass.  Nobody is dressed up (which isn't part of Catholic culture here) and they're not going to.  If you make the Mass a 9:00 Mass, they'll have to go to another Parish.

Ultimately, if you make it impossible for them to go early, they'll end up going in the middle of the day.  They'll accommodate the Church, and they should, but it's something that at least a little more consideration should be given to.

A lot more consideration should be given to Holy Day schedules.

At the time I'm writing this its All Saints Day (I started this on the morning of All Hallowed Eve).  This means its a Holy Day of Obligation and I must go to Mass.

It's also a blistering work day.

The Catholic Priests on Catholic Stuff You Should Know have noted that the inconvenience of attending a Holy Day Mass is part of what makes it something that should in fact exist.  It refocuses you in a necessary fashion.  I agree with that, but those who schedule Masses should also make it at least somewhat easy to attend.

The downtown Parish has a built in demographic of downtown Catholics. For many years, it had a noon Mass.  I used to attend it and not only on Holy Days, but on days I was in town.  I loved it. Rather than lunch, which I'm not a huge fan of, I'd just go to Mass.  I'd see some of the same people who worked downtown doing the same thing I was, walking to Mass for noon.

Due to their being only one Priest at the Parish for a time, the noon Mass was eliminated. There are two now, but the noon one has never been restored.  There is an early morning Mass, but frankly working people aren't going ot make that one as a rule, even though its very early.  I suppose I could, but I leave the house plenty early as it is, and when I still had to take children to school, it was impossible.

Noon was quite possible.

On Holy Days a person could make that early morning Mass, but I won't.  I'll have to make one later in the day.

Both of the other parishes have a Mass at 9:00. No working person can make that.

Our Parish used to have an anticipatory Mass at 5:15.  That was ideal for working people who worked downtown.  You got off work and went right to Mass.

Well, now that's at 6:00.  For downtown workers that means they'll go home and then go elsewhere, as a rule.

For anticipatory Masses, in fact, there are no early ones.  Two of the churches have 6:00 Masses.  But again, if you worked a hard day, by the time you go home, you'll be tired.  For people with young children, they'll be fussy.  For people with older children, the specter of homework will be looming.  

Indeed, locally, the only Mass that now is convenient for me is the 5:30 Holy Day Mass at the neighborhood church.  So the rescheduling has not only taken me out of my local parish again, it's taken me right to one of the churches that is now full to overflowing at every Mass, because of the relocation of the school.

Greeters

Okay, one more really minor one.

I know that one of the really common complaints people have about any church is that "they don't feel welcome".

Frankly, I doubt that.  I've never felt unwelcome at a Catholic Church and what I think the real story is that people who leave a church use an excuse like that.  Nobody wants to use the excuse like "the Catholic Church takes the Christ and the Apostles really seriously so I couldn't be married five times and be having an affair with six women and fell good about myself".  People switch churches for a lot of reasons, of course, but a lot of people do so really do so as they want to make life easier for themselves and the Apostolic Churches take the Gospels very seriously. 

Anyhow, seemingly as a reaction to that, or simply even due to polling of parishioners in general, getting into a church in some localities is like being a running back trying to get past a defense line.  You go in and all of a sudden you're going to have to shake somebody's hand and somebody is going to welcome you.

For me, being welcomed at the door is a really odd experience if I'm at a Mass that I'm not usually at.  Catholic Parishes have a lot of members but its very often the case that people tend to go to the same Mass.  It's actually possible for you not to know that somebody who attends the same church you do is a Catholic if they're a casual acquaintance as you don't go to the same Mass, save for the vagabondi who move around.  Given this, you can have the really odd experience of being welcomed by an overenthusiastic greeter who then asks something like "visiting?"

He or she is trying to be friendly, but I'm highly introverted, old and cranky.  I'm just trying to make it into Mass.  So I'm likely to respond "No, I've been coming here since 1963".  Its' rude on my part but for the highly introverted to be flanked by greeters is stress inducing.

Indeed, at the downtown Parish I go in a side door.  That way the only greeter I ever meet is the very nice and very nicely dressed teenage girl who hands out bulletins.  As she recognizes me, all she's going to do is hand me a bulletin.

I was asked, I'd note, to be a greeter at one time. That would be such a nightmare for me, I declined.

One change the new Priest has done downtown is to quit having bulletins available before Mass. That's an interesting change and I don't know why.  There's probably a reason for it.  It's not an accident however.