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March 6, 2020
Christina Gray
Catholic San Francisco
In the five years that he’s been pastor of St. Anselm Parish in Marin County, Father Jose Shaji, like many Catholic pastors, has looked out from the altar at a progressively shrinking congregation.
“I’ve seen it especially at the 10 a.m. Sunday Mass, that’s the family Mass,” Father Shaji told Catholic San Francisco in a Feb. 27 interview at the parish in Ross.
After a survey of Massgoers last fall, he and other leaders have a clearer picture of what brings local Catholics in the door and what keeps them or family members away - and what they can and cannot do about either.
“The people here want to see a church that is more accountable, more transparent, more inclusive,” said Father Shaji, summarizing the survey’s main takeaways shared with parishioners in after-Mass town hall meetings last month.
About 100 people ranging from children and teenagers to parish denizens responded to the four-question, open-ended survey made available last fall after Masses and online at the parish website, he said.
A majority of respondents, he said, “love the church and do not want to leave,” but bemoaned the lack of women in church liturgy, a still-unsatisfactory systemic response to clerical sex abuse and a perceived lack of welcome to divorced, single, LGBTQ and younger members they said are marginalized in parish communities.
The idea for the survey was born out of two similar town hall meetings held in the aftermath of a new wave of clergy sex abuse scandals in the fall of 2018.
Father Shaji brought reeling parishioners together then to hear their outrage and pain. A parish-wide survey of the parish community was discussed at that time.
“We wanted a tool to help people know there is a place where they can say what they have to say,” said Father Shaji, who sensed continuing disillusionment and disengagement “simmering in the background” of his flock.
The St. Anselm survey was a step ahead of an archdiocesan-led survey that arrived in parishes in December following the Archdiocese of San Francisco’s annual October Mass count. The 2019 count showed a consistent 4% annual drop in Mass attendance over the last five years.
The St. Anselm survey asked people what brought them to Mass there, what their vision was for the parish, what their vision was for the worldwide church, and what direction they felt Pope Francis should be leading it.
“We didn’t want to lead the conversation, we just wanted to open it,” said Deacon Robert Maeve, who compiled the responses into a document parish leaders could digest. “We were looking for trends.”
He stressed that the results were a qualitative, not quantitative measure of parishioner attitudes about the local and the universal church.
In a nutshell, survey respondents said they appreciated St. Anselm parish and school communities, the beautiful church buildings and for many, the long history of receiving the sacraments there.
The pastor’s openness to lay leadership and candid dialogue within the community earned high marks from survey respondents, said Maureen Dear, chairperson of the parish’s Spiritual Life Committee.
“I was at every town hall meeting and people stood up and thanked Father Jose,” Dear said. The committee is a unique parish ministry that allows laity to “have a say about what speaks to our spiritual needs.”
Liturgy with greater appeal to younger people was repeatedly mentioned in survey results, with “lively, upbeat” music requested as an alternative at least on occasion, to “slow, somber and uninspiring” organ music.
“Music is important to young people,” wrote one respondent. “The current music feels old and from the past -- like the church is dying.”
A true minority called for change backward, however, not forward.
“The traditional Tridentine Latin Mass is the way the Mass should be celebrated,” said one respondent. “Vatican II was a big mistake and Satan was definitely present and manipulating the proceedings.”
When it came to the future of St. Anselm and the universal church, an overwhelming majority envisioned a diverse, multi-generational parish community where women, youth, the divorced, singles and LGBTQ community are acknowledged and active.
Some spoke directly to the latter.
A respondent who said her parents raised her in the Catholic Church and whose family attended Sunday Mass at St. Anselm had stopped going to church the previous year.
“I am gay, and I do not feel St. Anselm had the right community for me,” she wrote.
Another called it “embarrassing to be Catholic” as a woman who is excluded from the liturgy and has a gay sibling.
“How do I rationalize being part of something that silences my voice and condemns my family members?” she said.
The perception that the church had not yet “come clean” on the abuse crisis pervaded the survey results, said Dear, with many saying they felt they “couldn’t move forward” unless that happens.
Deacon Maeve said St. Anselm had no illusions that one small parish survey is going to create the big institutional changes described in the survey results.
“We understand that we were not going to push this up to the Vatican, and that Francis is going to suddenly say, you know that St. Anselm is right, I never thought of it that way, but we really should have more women,” he said.
For now the parish is wasting no time making some of the changes reflected in the survey at the parish level. As one example, the parish has started a twice-monthly Sunday night youth Mass with contemporary music that Dear reported is “packed” by young and old.
“The young people have really taken ownership of the Mass and have been very responsible with it,” she said.
She called the survey a “beautiful experience” for the parish.
“These are people who love their church and love their faith,” she said. They are not “troublemakers or radicals,” she said, but people who are simply worried about the future of the church.
Father Shaji’s invitation to let people speak their minds and “be the change” they want to see is working for now.
“As long as they are talking they are not walking out the door,” Dear said.