“This was harder than I thought it would be,” Margaret O’Brien told a CBS reporter last weekend. O’Brien, 86, had been one of the hundred or so parishioners holding a round-the-clock vigil at St. Frances X. Cabrini church in Scituate, Mass. Eleven years ago the Boston Archdiocese announced that it was closing the parish, a reorganization necessitated by the financial settlements after the clergy sex-abuse scandal. The parishioners at St. Frances have tried to alter the hierarchy’s decision using canon law as well as the US legal system, maintaining a presence in the building so it would not be sold out from under them.
But last month, they lost their final appeal when the Supreme Court declined to take their case. And on Sunday, they held their final service, holding 11 prayer quilts the community had created to commemorate each year of their battle.
What’s striking about St. Frances, though — in addition to the fact that it has stayed open longer than the other congregations that have protested these closure decisions — is the amazing level of commitment demonstrated by its congregants. For a hundred people to rotate shifts every day of the year for 11 years is nothing short of miraculous, particularly in our modern era. At a time when there are so many things besides faith that are competing for our attention, the parishioners at St. Frances prioritized religious life in a way that most Americans do not.
Most Americans do not manage to go to church even once a week, let alone promise to sign up to keep watch over a religious institution for hours at a time. In the 2014 Religious Landscape Survey, about 29 percent of Catholics said they had volunteered in the previous week. But only about a third of those had done so through their church. Despite all the talk about the “Francis effect,” American Catholics have not changed their religious habits even under the new pope, according to a Pew report from last year. They go to Mass, confession, and volunteer the same number of hours.
But at St. Frances they were participating in a kind of revolution. Church was an all-hands-on-deck sort of affair. Multiple generations participated in the St. Frances vigil. Triplets Christian, Scott and Sean Arnold, all 17 years old, had taken the Friday night vigil shift for most of their lives. “We’ve been doing this for 11 years,” Sean told the New York Times. “So, like, not doing this, what else are we going to do?” The regular participation has also created a kind of social cohesion that is rare these days. Parishioners regularly ran into each other thanks to the vigil and formed the type of strong bonds that were once common among neighbors.
“What’s striking about St. Frances, though — is the amazing level of commitment demonstrated by its congregants.”
Apparently the parishioners were willing to contribute financially as well. The parish was free of debt and had even raised the possibility of opening up a Catholic school for the community.
While the hierarchy has expressed its hope that the St. Frances congregants will join other local parishes, they say they are done. Starting next week, the members will be forming a religious institution independent of the church, meeting initially at the local masonic lodge.
This is a loss for the Catholic Church in more ways than one. St. Frances is the latest of many parishes to be closed, but it is unlikely to be the last. And not just because of the legal settlements. Between 2007 and 2014, according to Pew, the percentage of Americans identifying as Catholic went from 23.9 percent to 21 percent.
While the Catholic hierarchy may not have had a choice in closing the parish, in order to thrive they need to re-create exactly the kind of community that St. Frances had become. Especially with a decline in vocations, the church is more dependent on lay participation than ever.
“This situation presents a paradox for the Catholic Church,” says David Campbell, a professor at Notre Dame and the co-author of “American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us.” Campbell notes, “They are closing parishes because too few Catholics show the sort of commitment to Catholicism that has motivated and sustained these protestors . . . As a tactical matter, the Church presumably would have preferred apathy. But as a matter of long-term strategy, the protest suggests a level of commitment that could perhaps be a catalyst for greater institutional vitality.”
Says O’Brien, “For reasons that I can’t understand, I feel nervous . . . On the other hand, I’m kind of relieved. We fought the good fight. We did everything we could.” When it comes to their religious congregations, that’s more than most Americans can say.
