There was a dead mouse in the bathtub! I guess he slipped in and found himself in an overwhelming situation he couldn’t get out of—but died trying. Somehow he seemed like a symbol and a warning as we three priests took possession of a rubbish-filled and moldering South Bronx parish rectory in the summer of 1973. The church and school building next door was a fit companion: a graffiti-covered and stained brick facade, dirty and peeling interior walls, and a couple of hundred school families poised on the brink of transferring their kids elsewhere. The first countersign to all this ugly disorder that the new pastoral team could give was to be there. The next step was to clean, repair, and put in some kind of attractive order whatever we could: buildings and grounds as well as organizations and programs.
We did a lot of talking and praying and planning, among ourselves, with lay leaders of the parish, and later with the two religious sisters who came to work with us. The twenty-one story housing project buildings towering over the church and marching down the street in ordered files seemed to mock our best efforts by asserting that whatever we did was only a drop in the bucket, that the sheer numbers of people and multiplicity of problems would certainly overwhelm us. Even so, we opted to work in depth with the people with whom we were in contact, rather than launch any massive programs of outreach. We were afraid of superficiality and of squandering our limited resources, but more than that we believed that Church was primarily a matter of discipleship and that all its members were called to share in its mission and to serve. We had to help them become better disciples and better leaders. Pastorally we decided to be more a quartermaster corps than a vanguard!
During the first Lent and Easter time we had offered an extensive program for the formation of adults who had not received sacraments. Surprisingly, thirty or forty others participated as well. There seemed to be a hunger for solid religious formation. Encouraged by the experience, that fall we announced a sixteen-week formation program to prepare adults already involved in some kind of apostolic service. Borrowing from the Mansight program, we mixed dialogue-reflections on provocative photos of inner-city realities with an introduction to the Bible and its different kinds of writings. The rationale was to reflect on others’ experiences of a life of faith (the Bible) and to examine in faith our own lives and realities.
The course was enthusiastically attended. At the end, almost everybody asked for more, especially more Scripture. We made a “part two” that spring. At the end, almost everybody asked for more, especially more Scripture! We made a “part three” the next fall and repeated “part one” too. By the time we reached the third year we realized that a long-range leadership formation program had evolved, shaped by the interests and experiences of the predominantly Hispanic and black inner-city residents who had participated in it and by the faith and ecclesial vision of the priests and sisters providing the formation.
A couple of years later, one of those providential and happy convergences took place: by 1978 we had had some considerable and, thanks be to God, successful experience in the formation of lay leaders in our small parish. Also, for a couple of years previously the members of the South Bronx Catholic Association, a voluntary organization of clergy, religious, and lay leaders of the area parishes, had been expressing concern for adult religious formation and development of lay leadership. Finally, the dynamic, full-time episcopal vicar of the South Bronx was calling for a school of ministry. Why not use us, we suggested. The offer was duly considered, accepted, and blessed, and the South Bronx Pastoral Center was born.
At first we just ran a new flag up the pole—it was still the original parish program, somewhat reorganized, with participants from nearby parishes. But it started to catch on. At the recommendation of the episcopal vicar, in the fall of 1979 Cardinal Terence Cooke decided to set up the Pastoral Center as a separate entity with its own bilingual staff, budget, and governing board. The center began to offer two main types of courses and trainings, both in English and in Spanish: a long-range, general leadership formation program which was a refinement and elaboration of the original parish program and a variety of specialized programs concerned with formation for specific parish ministries and community services.
The four-year leadership formation program is divided into two areas: religious studies and communication skills. The courses in religious studies have to do with a study of the roots and development of Christianity and the Church with the purpose of communicating a fuller Christian vision and ideology. They consist of a series of five ten-week courses in biblical studies, two courses in Church history, and one course in the theology of Church and ministry. The courses in communication skills offer practical training in skills of communication and leadership with the purpose of enabling their participants better to develop, express, and implement their ideas, especially as members of groups. Courses in this area include public speaking, group decision making, group dynamics, and parliamentary procedure.
One lesson we learned early on: there is no fast way to prepare leaders. It is a slow and patient process of providing people with opportunities to develop their self-image, acquire an awareness of their potential resources, and motivate their involvement in local parish and community problems. Especially it has to do with providing them with an understanding of the roots of their Catholic traditions and of a Christian vision of life as a basis for their activities. It has to do with that most radical of empowerments: the nurture of faith, hope, and love.
Although there are many starting points for such a personal, pastoral, and theological formation, we use the Bible. The people with whom we work have a deep thirst for the word of God and a great desire to know the Scriptures. Usually they begin with very simple and pietistic kinds of religious attitudes and are seeking to turn from the world and towards the Lord. As they are introduced to basic methods of Bible study and as the inner dynamism of the word touches them, they gradually. move to a more integrated and adult religious perspective that involves a sense of mission and social responsibility. It’s a beautiful process to see!
It’s not enough to have the word in your mind and heart; you must be able to utter it effectively. Accordingly another major component of this general leadership formation program is equipping its participants with the practical communication and organizational skills necessary to exercise responsibility in their local communities and parishes. Simple training in public communication, providing techniques of speaking and opportunities to practice under supervision, usually proves to be a powerful experience of liberation. After a few weeks, you may see someone who previously never spoke before a group standing up at a local parish meeting confidently making an effective and articulate contribution!
Besides this in-depth and extensive Christian leadership formation, the Pastoral Center offers or projects a wide variety of specialized training programs for liturgical and sacramental ministries, for catechists and other ministers of the word, and for various forms of community development and social action ministries. Usually these training programs are conducted, locally in the parish to prepare parishioners for specific pastoral responsibilities there. In one parish, for example, we meet weekly with a dozen parishioners for ten sessions to form a baptism apostolate team. The sessions involve familiarizing them with a format of prayer, reflection, and practical training in how to interview parents, conduct a home visit, prepare parents and godparents in formal classes, assist in the liturgical celebration of infant baptism, and maintain contact with the family after the ceremony.
In other parishes we’ve conducted similar programs to form a parish lector team, to train catechists of children, to prepare teams to conduct home-centered programs of evangelization, to educate those responsible for the faith development of adults, to form prayer group leaders, to train eucharistic ministers, and to familiarize community leaders with the political system and people’s rights. Also from time to time we offer retreats and reflection days to provide a solid personal and spiritual foundation to the many people training for ministry and leadership.
To date we’ve been active in nine different parishes besides maintaining a full range of programs at the center itself, a former parochial school building that we use on a part-time basis. The first year there were 209 men and women participating in our classes and programs; the second year, 265; the third, 448; currently there are even more. In the past four years we’ve been in touch with and offered some training to 1,005 persons. In the process we’ve developed detailed lesson plans and class outlines in Spanish and in English for forming parish apostolic groups and for teaching Scripture, Church history, some theology, communication skills, and catechetics to inner-city adults with little schooling.
In summary, the Pastoral Center represents a new and creative approach to the renewal of local parishes and the development of lay leadership and ministries. It’s now offering specialized, auxiliary, and complementary pastoral services to the twenty-four parishes of the South Bronx Vicariate and to another twenty-six parishes in neighboring areas. Its obvious and direct purpose is to assist in the recruitment, training, and utilization of lay leaders—tasks which the numerically reduced and over-burdened pastoral staffs of the parishes are unable to accomplish adequately. Its more subtle purpose is to affect the vision of Church of the local parishes, to assist in developing more evolving and developing models of parish and mission, and to institutionalize new structures for lay ministry in the ongoing life of the local parish.
We haven’t transformed the world yet; we haven’t even changed the face of the South Bronx. But in the midst of all the social ills and physical blight there’s just a little more hope, a little more vision, and a little more joining of hands of brothers and sisters in Christ in the work of building the Church and renewing the face of the earth.
[Published in
New Catholic World, 225:1347, May/June 1982)