Greenville-Ephrathah 15

This post links to RAnn's Sunday Snippets

 

Li'l'Phrathah

Columbus discovers America.  

  

Aboriginals respond, "we were here all along."

Greenville-Ephrathah 14: Mass Appeal

 

l'il 'phrathah needs to stay little

Easter Sunday Greenville SC newspaper lede: "Catholic Church growing fast in Upstate: Upstate Catholic population grew by 41% in past decade while largest Protestant denominations fell in members." 

Our parish brought in 28 at the Vigil: half converts, half unbaptized. That's good. Yet:

Be sober, be vigilant: because your adversary the devil, as a roaring Lion walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.

Greenville-Ephrathah 12: Third Billing

 Li'l 'phrathah's fired-up

Please join us at St. Anthony's Catholic Store on Tuesday, February 19th from 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm for a Book Signing.

Featured will be nationally known author, Abby Johnson, with her book "Unplanned".

She will be joined by local authors Robbie Boman, author of "Miracles of South Carolina" and "More Miracles of South Carolina", and Christian LeBlanc, author of "The Bible Tells Me So".

Hey, I ain't complaining. As Crash taught Nuke to say, "I'm just happy to be here."

Greenville-Ephrathah 11

 

 Li'l 'phrathah

Recent news:

"A federal appeals court in Washington has reinstated the lawsuits for two religious colleges challenging a federal law that would compel them to cover contraception, abortifacients and sterilization in their employee health-insurance plans...During oral arguments Tuesday, HHS lawyers promised that the government would “never enforce” the mandate in its current form against Wheaton College, an evangelical liberal arts school in Illinois, or Belmont Abbey, a Catholic liberal arts college in North Carolina." (National Catholic Register)

But what makes the story Ephrathah-worthy?

Last week I was listening to one of the local Fundamentalist radio stations; their format is music, news, and gospel-preaching. When Catholicism comes up, it's in the context of its false teachings. In fact right now, the radio preacher is saying we've become our own priests and don't need a priest in a box. Straight to Jesus, amen! That's fine with me: I'm glad they just say what they mean. But when their newsman introduced the above ruling, he said it was in favor of "two Christian colleges," which he then proceeded to name. It would've been easy enough say a Christian college and a Catholic college, which is what I would've expected. It's a small thing; but not less significant to me for its smallness.

Kind of like the first Ephrathah.

Greenville-Ephrathah 10: World Premiere

 Li'l 'phrathah sez: Git fired up 'bout Evangelizin'!

Saint Mary’s Catholic Church will host George Weigel for his premier lecture on his new book Evangelical Catholicism : Deep Reform in the 21st Century Church. For more information about the event, click here.

Greenville-Ephrathah 9: Organic Gravity

Little Ephrathah 

My Fabulous Wife & I had Sunday lunch with a Priest Acquaintance of ours; his Wife; a visiting Catholic Author; and a Deacon Acquaintance, who commented on the burgeoning Catholic Gravity of another Bible-Belt American City Which Shall Remain Nameless. How does its gravity compare to Li'l 'phrathah's?

That's a good question. Li'l 'phrathah is about one tenth the size of Gargantua; obviously 10 kilos has 10 times the gravity of 1 kilo. And any Southerner or Stalinist can tell ya [although from opposing viewpoints] that quantity has a quality all its own. But still, here's a case where quality has a quantity all its own. What quality? Why, the quality of...organicness. Or organicity; or both. See, while Gargantua does have Catholic Gravity, it's mostly Institutional. Top-down. Cathedral. Higher Education. Seminary. Big Numbers. And there's nothing wrong with that, y'know? But 'phrathah's gravity is bottom-up, lay-driven, informally-structured, self-organizing, self-motivating, self-energizing, diffuse, nimble. A Catholic Swarm Intelligence transcending local parish boundaries and other geographies.

Of course, a bottom-up approach isn't unique to the Upstate. Check out these Cascadia guys, they get it too. Put in more familiar terms, what we are seeing are evolving, living models of the New Evangelization.

Greenville-Ephrathah 8: New Evangelization

In the Grey Building on the Left

One of the themes that I draw out of the New Evangelization thing is that ya can't sit around whinin' about why Faddah a Sistah ain't takin' care a dis a dat. That is, lay Catholics have to take responsibility on their own initiative, without the hierarchy having to pre-plan and hand-hold. Here's a nice recent example of what I'm talking about:

For a few years, there have been informal lunch circles among Catholic men [both lay and clergy] here. But last week one of my KofC brothers sent out an email to all the Catholic men he knew who did that sort of thing to come to one place for lunch on a given day. Here's the edited text of the email:

"Once a month Catholic men from around Greenville, especially the ones that work close or can make it for lunch downtown will be meeting for some lunch and fellowship. No sharing of feelings needed just come and shoot the breeze, meet some fellow Catholic men and practice being Catholic. This will be a great time to meet some new guys and foster some old friendships.

There are no rules, just a couple of suggestions. Keep the talk charitable and business (work related, business schemes, money making ventures) should be conducted at other times.

Please, I hope you guys can support this. The following bulletin column should be in all the local Parish bulletins soon.

"Friends,

We are starting a monthly Catholic Men's Fellowship Lunch for the Greenville area. The hope is that it will bring Catholic men together and help build up and strengthen our local Catholic community. Our hope is to foster some small groups to meet at lunch in between our monthly lunch that will study scripture and our deep and rich faith. This is not a replacement to any of the current groups already meeting in your parish but a broader outreach to all the Catholic men in our community as one Church. We will send an invite to all respondents the Monday before the lunch as a reminder. Our plan is to rotate the restaurant to other downtown Catholic-owned establishments based on our turnout and who is willing to host. We appreciate any help and most importantly all the prayers you can provide. Hopefully, we will see you there."

28 showed up that first time. Not bad.

BTW this ties in with Forming Intentional Disciples by Sherry Weddell, which I expect to be reviewing presently.

Greenville-Ephrathah 7

Check out a new gracious & civilized magazine, the brainchild of Daughters of Ephrathah.

Greenville- Ephrathah 6

Tonight Li'l 'Phrathah hosts Transitional Deacon Jon Chalmers' ordination.
 

Greenville-Ephrathah 5

 Li'l 'phrathah

From St. Mary's pastor:

St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenville, SC will be the site of the first ordination for the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter. On Wednesday 11 April 2012, Jon David Chalmers will be ordained to the diaconate and on Sunday 3 June 2012 he will be ordained to the priesthood for service in the Ordinariate. Jon has been called to Holy Orders by the Ordinary, Monsignor Jeffrey Steenson, and he will be ordained by the Most Reverend Robert E. Guglielmone, Bishop of Charleston. The diaconal ordination on April 11th is at 12 noon, and all are welcome.

Greenville-Ephrathah 4: Local Music

Postlude at the close of Lenten Vespers. Music by the parish organist, Robert Lee. This recording is by the choral ensemble, Concordiae: Singers of Ecclesiastical Music, directed by parish choirmaster Arlen Clarke.

It's not very Lenten, but Vespers is on Sunday.

Evening Prayer

Greenville Ephrathah 3

 L'il 'phrathah

 Plus de stuf:

1. Creative-type Sons of Ephrathah dive headsfirst into the New Evangelization & All That.

2. During the first weeks of February, local pastors from St. Mary's & Our Lady of the Rosary visited the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter which has been set up in Houston.

3. The pastor of St. Mary's was interviewed by the New York Times on the subject of married Catholic priests. Maybe next time he'll get interviewed by the paper of record, the Wall Street Journal...am I digressing?

4. Speaking of married priests, tonight at Ash Wednesday Mass, local former Episcopalian priest Jon Chalmers was thumbing ash crosses onto foreheads. So he's back from a stint in Houston, a candidate for Holy Orders, and soon to be ordained a deacon.

By the way, in case you're holding your breath until L'il 'phrathah does something fabulous- let it out. It took about 700 years for the first Ephrathah prophecy to pay off.

Greenville Ephrathah 2

Putatively unrelated data which nonetheless incrementally reveal little Ephrathah's veiled future:

From St. Mary's January 15 Sunday bulletin:

"Father Jon Chalmers is a priest of the Episcopal Church (the main American branch of the Anglican Communion), and for the past two years he has been on the staff at Christ Church here in Greenville. On Sunday 22 January 2012 during the 11 am Mass, Jon Chalmers will be received into full communion with the Catholic Church and confirmed by Bishop Guglielmone, and the following week he will begin his formation for priestly ordination in the Catholic Church in Houston, Texas — the seat of the new Ordinariate. In the coming months, if sufficient numbers of Anglicans desire to be joined to the Ordinariate here in Greenville, Jon will be responsible for their pastoral care, and after his ordination as a Catholic priest, he will celebrate the Anglican Use liturgy as well as be available to assist local Roman Rite parishes."

(It's likely that St. Mary's Parish would host any local Anglican congregation until it gets its own facility, as happened with St. Rafka's Maronite Catholic congregation.)

From Our Lady of the Rosary Parish:

Fr. Longenecker's 12 Days of Christmas

And: "Join EWTN personalities and authors Joanna Bogle, Joseph Pearce, and Fr. Dwight Longenecker on Saturday, January 21 from 8:30am-3:30pm at OLR Church for "A Day Conference on English Catholicism Then & Now."

From the diocesan newspaper:

"Father Christopher Smith, who is studying at the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain, will become the administrator of Prince of Peace Church...effective Dec. 15."  Fr. Smith, a product of both St. Mary's and Our Lady of the Rosary, has returned to Ephrathah. I should mention that My Mother the English Teacher taught young Chris Smith everything he knows except for what he learned at the seminary. And Pamplona. And Rome.

This article reacquaints us with the diocese's 10 seminarians. Two of them, like Father Smith, are Sons of Ephrathah.

And yet:  Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

Greenville Ephrathah

This post links to RAnn's Sunday Snippets 

I moved to Greenville, SC from alluvial Houma, Louisiana in 1965 when I was 8 years old. Greenville was a hilly Baptist textile town, with disturbingly orange dirt. The local college was fenced-in Bob Jones University, the very Buckle of the Bible Belt. There were only two Catholic churches: St. Mary's downtown, and Holy Rosary (now Our Lady of the Rosary) near the closed Donaldson Air Force Base. Virtually all the Catholics were Yankees, and their faith and accents made them stranger than Martians to the locals. I remember my own culture shock: how can you have a parade without people on the floats throwing necklaces and candy to everybody? Do you just stand there and look at it?

But the Catholic minority has been putting down roots in the hard Piedmont clay for a few generations now. And like a transplanted grapevine, the Church has been shaped by the bracing Fundamentalist/ Evangelical terroir (I just wanted to say "terroir") of the Upstate. Among other distinctives, local Catholicism tends toward Scriptural literacy, an evangelistic readiness to explain the faith, and an appreciation for the Bible-believers' assumption that religion matters- and not just privately, but publicly.

In the last decade or so, this Upstate Catholicism has acquired...what, a momentum? a gravity? that continues to develop. I'm not gonna name names, but my wife and I think of all the people we know who weren't Catholic, and are now; people who were already Catholic, and decided to move here; and people who aren't Catholic, but are being drawn into the Catholic orbit. My parish has about 40 people in RCIA who'll enter the Church on Easter Vigil. And we wonder at this confluence. Is just by accident? Is it for some purpose? And it isn't just one church, but a coalescence that extends across parishes, and even rites. Nor is it primarily driven by the pastors. They play a critical leadership role, but the laity are self-motivating.

Our house nickname for this phenomenon is Greenville-Ephrathah, by which we mean that little nowhere Upstate South Carolina may be unknowingly preparing for an as-yet-unspecified role in some mysterious process. I'm uncomfortable thinking about it too explicitly- maybe it's supposed to be an inchoate (I just wanted to say "inchoate") je ne sais quoi (uh-huh) for the time being, and patience is required. It's scary, but in a good way. I've even been reluctant to make a peep about it here, but in the last year the energy has palpably increased.

Thus far there's been no reason for anything but optimism. But I'm reminded of the Catholic novel Morte d'Urban, in which great promise is ultimately dissipated. And if this swell of faith is indeed real and part of a larger plan, then Satan is sure to try to derail it. So my motivation for blabbing this on the net is that if something bad does happen here (I have no idea what, except it wouldn't be the usual), nobody should be discouraged, no-one should lose heart. If bad comes, it doesn't have to be the end; rather, through renewed faith & works it'll turn out to have been just an obstacle that was overcome.

And meanwhile, it's an interesting time to be Catholic in the Upstate.



But thou, O Greenville Ephrathah, though thou be little among the thousands of America, yet out of thee shall...shall what? what?