Dying Churches, Revived in a Flash
The idea behind Buffalo Mass Mob is simple. Pick an old Roman Catholic church, in one of Buffalo’s hollowed-out immigrant neighborhoods, where the congregation has dwindled to a white-haired few, where the spaces beneath the great stone arches ring with the echo of abandonment. Send the word by Facebook and Twitter to Catholics across western New York: O.K., everybody, let’s all show up there one Sunday.
Then, for one morning, for one Mass, the decades are erased. It’s the 1970s again, when inner-city parishes were healthy, when the pews and collection baskets were full and the future looked as solid as those arches. Mass Mob taps the un-self-absorbed side of the Internet for an act of communal generosity and creative nostalgia. The result is both familiar and surreal, like a visitation by Our Lady of Brigadoon.
The first Mass Mob was in November at St. Adalbert Basilica, on the city’s east side, in the once-all-Polish, now diverse, neighborhood called Polonia. The third is planned for this Sunday in the same neighborhood, a few blocks down Broadway at St. John Kanty, a red brick, neo-Gothic church built in 1892. Organizers are hoping to draw 400 to 500 people to a church that holds 1,500, which is a lot more than the usual 80 or 90 at the 10:30 a.m. Sunday Mass.
Judith Felski, a parishioner who sings in the choir, says the congregation is getting ready. The meditation hymn will be “W krzyzu cierpienie,” or “Cross of Compassion,” sung in Polish and English. There will be two songs at communion, not one, because the lines will be longer.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/22/opinion/dying-churches-revived-in-a-flash.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0
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