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Father Pat Michaels, pastor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Mill Valley, outside the church. (Photo by Christina Gray/Catholic San Francisco)
June 21, 2018
Christina Gray
In the 50 years since it was built, Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, perched on the redwood slopes of Mount Tamalpais has become an iconic feature of Mill Valley’s small-town landscape.
“The interesting thing is you can’t come downtown without seeing it,” said longtime pastor Father Pat Michaels. “The gold cross rises above the whole town.”
Catholic San Francisco visited the parish on May 31 to talk about the anniversary of the church built in 1968 for a Catholic community that goes back 108 years. Part of the conversation revolved around the unique challenges of “being church” in affluent Mill Valley.
“One of my parishioners challenged me,” said Father Michaels who, outside of the celebration of the Mass, had often opted for his “civilian” clothing. “He said to me, ‘Father it would be great if you could wear your collar just so people could see that God is in this town.’”
Father Pat said he often gets together with other Christian church leaders in Mill Valley. “One of the common themes in our conversations is about ‘being church’ in an environment that if not hostile to organized religion, is not exactly friendly to it,” he said. “That’s one of the bigger things we face today in Mill Valley.”
The pastor and his flock are making a point of being visible in the community and involved in town-wide projects. The parish had a great experience marching together in the town’s Memorial Day parade this year carrying a float of the church.
“People are cheering from the sidelines, and saying ‘Hi, Father’ and I don’t recognize them,” he said. “That’s one of the things we’ve been trying to do is to be more visible and more present.”
Things were a bit different when the parish of today first sprouted roots. According to a history on the parish website, local Catholic families in Mill Valley originally worshipped in a homey mission outpost of Sausalito’s St. Mary Star of the Sea Church.
On Sunday mornings, a priest from Sausalito saddled up his horse and climbed the foothills of Mount Tamalpais to the home of a local Catholic family where others in the community gathered for Sunday worship.
By 1893 a small church building had been constructed not far away to be served by the same Sausalito priests. In 1910 it became an independent parish when San Francisco Archbishop Patrick W. Riordan dedicated it and named Our Lady of Mount Carmel because of the area’s resemblance to Palestine.
The congregation eventually outgrew that church too and a new one was built on the land where the current church building is. That church and later a school, ministered to the Catholic community through the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 and the great Mill Valley fire of 1929 until the church fell off its foundation and was torn down.
Mass was held in the Our Lady of Mount Carmel School gymnasium until 1968 when the current structure opened its large, locally milled redwood doors.
The unusual 12-sided building holds layers of meaning, according to the parish website. Twelve is the number of tribes of Israel, the chosen people who are “our ancestors in faith.” The Twelve Apostles also are the foundation of the church.
But filling the 850 seats with newcomers poses challenges Father Michaels said other Marin County priests face but who all agree seem most pronounced in Mill Valley.
“The entitlement that people talk about in Marin is rampant,” he said. “There are some very spiritual people here, but they are often into a spirituality that is self-defined and solitary.”
He blames, in part, wealth and a concentration of the larger societal trend toward “individualism to the exclusion of connection to other people” and “an indifference to what’s important and a focus on what doesn’t last.”
According the Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce, the median household income in Mill Valley is $109,759 – 78 percent higher than other California households.
“Wealth gives us a tremendous sense of our own accomplishment and power and independence,” he said.
Where does God’s love fit into that picture? “It really doesn’t,” Father Michaels said.
People can become their own God, he said. “It’s the Adam and Eve story in spades,” he said.
“One of the things that Jesus taught us is that there is only one power that truly works and that is the power of love,” he said. “Love works by giving. Unless you give it away it does not exist.”