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Sordid Use?

DISSIDENT CATHOLIC ORGANIZATION POISED TO BUY ST. ANN CHAPEL IN PALO ALTO

By George Neumayr

The Thomas Merton Center, an organization of self-styled "liberal" Catholics, is preparing to buy St. Ann Chapel in Palo Alto, according to its president, Dick Placone.

"It is not if we buy that property. It is when we buy it. Because we are going to buy it, " said Placone in an interview with San Francisco Faith in late March. "We are working very closely with the diocese....As of a week ago, as far as I know, we are the only one that has an actual formal proposal in..."

Strapped for cash, the diocese of San Jose is selling both St. Ann Chapel (presently part of St. Thomas Aquinas Parish) and the adjoining Norris House, together priced at least over $3 million, to fund nearby St. Dominic parish on the Stanford University campus.

Placone said that the Thomas Merton Center is the "favored buyer," pointing out that it already has a foothold at St. Ann. A year or so ago, after leaving the Church informally, the group negotiated a covenant with the diocese of San Jose to use St. Ann Chapel and the Norris House for diocesan-recognized masses and educational activities.

"We have a convenant with St. Thomas Aquinas Parish which has been approved by the diocese of San Jose whereby we pretty much operate indepedently, but we have agreed that we will use only regularly ordained priests in good standing for our liturgies. Otherwise, we pretty much manage ourselves."

Currently, Placone's group, which he says includes members from the anti-papal organization Call to Action, holds a free-form, lay-dominated 9:45 a.m. mass at St. Ann on Sunday mornings. According to Placone, the masses feature the occasional use of Jewish rabbis and Lutheran ministers as lay homilists, inclusive language from the Vatican-banned Canadian lectionary, and a host of other liturgical anomalies.

"We call the shots," said Placone. "We put a great deal of emphasis on the fact that this is a community coming together....[with] people participating in the prayers and preparing the altar for the sacrifice of the mass. Well, we don't call it that anymore--[we call it] the celebration of the Eucharist and so on...

"We are fully responsible for the lectors program, the communion ministers. We select our priests....Instead of the pastor telling us what to do, we do it ourselves...."

"Once a month we will have what we call a guest homilist. Of course, offically they are not allowed to give the homily. It is called a reflection on the gospel. But that's the semantics, so officially we don't get ourselves into difficulty with the diocese. We have guest speakers who will give reflections on the gospel and the readings of the day and these are sometimes women, sometimes men. And there people who usually have something to say. We have had Jewish rabbis. We have had Lutheran ministers and so forth. We are trying to open up and be somewhat more ecumenical, invite these people to participate in the service, to come and join in the celebration of the mass...

"We are using the Canadian lectionary. That's the one which has been adopted by the Canadian bishops. It is a very inclusive lectionary...It was the one that the Vatican turned down for the United States, but we are using it anyways. And our priests all know that we have no problem with that....

"We pretty much follow the standard readings but each presider is really free. We have some priests who really have their own way of doing it, and have been doing it their own way for many years and that is one of the reasons why they are with us because we really like the way they do things. They introduce a lot of their own prayers...

"[W]e just try to make more emphasis on the fact that this is a community celebration. We have one priest who, for example, asks everbody to come around the altar. There is a fairly large sanctuary that we are able to do that. Everybody gathers around the altar and you are a little closer in instead of being spread out in the whole chapel....When you are around 80 or 90 you can pretty much do it...

"You would notice some differences [in the mass]. We don't dress the altar until after the homily. The altar, for example when you come in, it is totally bare...And after the homily designated couples, family whatever([it is] different each Sunday) comes out and lays out the altar cloth, the candles the Eucharistic vessels so on and so forth. In other words, the symbolism is that the family is now preparing the altar at the table for the Eucharsitic meal or banquet to emphasize the symbolicness [sic] of what is about to take place.

"We have moved the sign or kiss of peace to the beginning after the penitential rite. We say that now that we have asked God to forgive us, we turn and ask for each other's forgiveness and offer each other a sign of peace. That seemed to be a more logical place to put it. Something else that you would find is that at the very beginning of mass when the presider comes in and he is up at the altar and he says,'This is the family gathering together. What are all the family celebrations we are concerned in?' And so people announce birthdays and anniversaries and major kinds of celebratory things..."

Placone, asked about the Vatican's recent document on the "clericalization of the laity," said that that normative document is absurd and has no bearing on the Thomas Merton Center Mass. "Not at all," he said. "As far as I'm concerned it is nonsense. It doesn't work. It doesn't recognize what is happening. It creates in my mind the priestly caste..." Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony's pastoral letter on the liturgy, on the other hand, appeals to Placone greatly: "Let us just say that the Pope would probably not consider me a Catholic but Cardinal Mahony would."

Father Phillip McCrillis, the San Jose diocese's vicar for parish, contacted by the Faith for this story in late March, did not rule the Thomas Merton Center out as a possible buyer of St. Ann Chapel, even as he said that "nobody is a favored buyer." Asked about abuses at the Thomas Merton Center mass, he said the diocese has "no evidence of that." The Thomas Merton Center is a "mild" group of "liberal Catholics," said Father McCrillis. "I don't see this group as problematic," he said, warning against an excessive concern about "the exact details" of the law. "Some of this is just a matter of style and taste."

Chuck Wilson, the executive director of the St. Joseph Foundation, a national canon law organization in San Antonio, meanwhile, is inviting concerned St. Ann Chapel parishioners to contact him regarding its sale. "It seems to me the relegation of the building to this group might be sordid use," he told the Faith on April 1 after being read Placone's remarks. "If an appeal is possible we would be happy to assist. We have a liaison in Rome...Rome is getting more and more involved in these matters...There are good reasons [for the diocese not to sell the chapel to this group] based on what you told me...It sounds like the group left the Church once....They could just as easily do it again."

William Mahrt, a professor of music at Stanford and the long-time director of St. Ann's Gregorian choir, is one such concerned parishioner. If the Thomas Merton Center turns St. Ann's Chapel "into a visible center of dissident Catholicism, it will be a serious problem for me," he says. "This situation brings to mind Flannery O'Connor's statement that the Protestants are worried about losing the faith and the Catholics are worried about losing the people."

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