Suburbia Triumphant

Growing up, as I was so fortunate to have done, as a baby Boomer in the aftermath of World War II, I was lucky not only to live in the Bronx, still in its glory (although fading faster than any of us then realized) but also to grow up in the glorious sunset of the urban Catholic parish neighborhood. Physically embodied in the great Gothic parish church across the street from where we lived, the parish church was by far the biggest and most impressive structure in the neighborhood and perhaps the most influential in that it served as the spiritual center and source of stability for most of our neighbors. What a sight it was in those days, Sunday after Sunday, as thousands of people poured out of the 13 Sunday Masses celebrated in both upper and lower churches! (Sunday Masses upstairs at 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 12:50 and downstairs at 9, 10:15, 11:15, 12:10, and 12:55.) The “candy store” owner on the ground floor of our building once remarked that they probably made more selling newspapers to the people coming out of church on Sunday than on anything else the rest of the week! As a child, I would attend the parish grade school and go on to the parish high school, the two other great parish institutions, which - along with the omnipresent Augustinian Fathers and Dominican Sisters who staffed them - made the parish plant the physical and psychological (and, of course, spiritual) communal anchor of our very densely populated, urban neighborhood.

Already, however, the pull of suburbanization was at work. My mother, more than the rest of us I think, hoped someday to be a suburban homeowner - a desire eventually fulfilled years later, when I was already away in grad school. By them both the Bronx and the Church were being blown about by in the fierce winds of change. Those changes, however, were themselves, in part at least, consequences of a wider cultural shift from the old urban neighborhoods where European Catholic immigrants and their children and grandchildren had made once made their communities to to new and very different kinds of communities in the suburbs. That is the story, so ably told by Holy Cros priest and historian at Notre Dame University Stephen M Koeth in his book Crabgrass Catholicism: How Suburbanization Transformed Faith and Politics in Postwar America (University of Chicago Press, 2025).

Koeth contends that "it is only through accounting for the religious lives of suburbanites that we can fully understand the processes of suburbanization and the experience of suburbia." He also argues that Catholic critiques of suburbia "were reflective of concerns over modernity, economic prosperity, consumerism, assimilation, and the decline of ethnic religiosity as much as they were a specific response to suburban living."

The author begins by recalling the urban Catholic world that the 19th- and 20th-century American Church had created up until World War II. His case-study for postwar suburbanization and Catholic institutional expansionism is Long Island, which experienced enormous suburban growth in the postwar period. It was on Long Island in 1957 that the first fully suburban diocese was created - the Diocese of Rockville Center - a situation which also left its mother diocese, Brooklyn, the only entirely urban diocese in the U.S.He surveys the Church's demographic and institutional expansion and thr attempts to transplant older models to this new ministerial setting.

An important contention of this book is that "space shapes religious practice." Because parishes often lacked adequate buildings and the nature of suburban transportation, the center of Catholic practice shifted from the parish plant to the family home, and traditional communal expressions of piety shifted to more domestic expressions. All this led to greater involvement of the laity in the Church's organizational life and mission - not so much as a result of Vatican II but actually in anticipation of it. This was the heyday of the Christian Family Movement, the Cana Conference, and Marriage Encounter.

In the process, the old ethnic divisions began to breakdown, and an ethnically amalgamated Catholic identity came to predominate. (Think of sociologist Will Herberg's famous, Protestant, Catholic, Jew, published in 1955.) At the same time, as white, once "ethnic" Catholics amalgamated, racial division and polarization predominated.

Meanwhile, despite the commendable effort to continue the commitment to parish schools, the sheer size of the population to be educated and financial and other pressures (e.g., high taxes supporting high quality public schools) led to a greater emphasis on religious education programs, often conducted in parishioners' homes. All this had a further effect on participation in post-war politics."Catholic voters ultimately prioritized tax relief and local control over obtaining state aid for parochial schools. Suburban Catholics became increasingly dissatisfied with New Deal liberalism and increasingly opne to conservative political positions.

The early expansion into suburbia coincided with an era of high churchgoing among American Catholics. (Hence, the regular erection of new parishes and constant construction of new churches and parish facilities.) U.S. Catholic Mass attendance peaked at 74% in 1958. By the early 1970s, however, the drop in Mass attendance could no longer be ignored. The author quotes Paulist John B. Sheerin, writing in 1973, regarding the alarm about the drop in Mass attendance then being sounded by Andrew Greeley, that it was "worth of far more concern than most Catholics had given it."

Boomers and their heirs "have ceased practicing their faith in ever-increasing numbers," and "many of the most plausible explanations for the declines are deeply connected to change sin American Catholicism wrought by postwar suburbanization and its attendant social transformations." In addition to the loss of the old urban identification between religion and neighborhood and the various structural and financial issues already alluded to especially in regard to Catholic education, Koeth also acknowledges untoward changes in the U.S. political climate. Many, especially millennials, "have been turned off by what they perceive to be the political agendas of religious leaders.

Thus, "one of the key ironies of this book" is "that even as the postwar move to the suburbs was marked by the optimism and excitement of proliferating parishes and schools and of classrooms, seminaries, and convents bursting at the seams, suburbanization was undermining the structures that had sustained the vibrant Catholic world of the 'immigrant Church.' In opening an entirely new era for the Church, suburbanization sowed seeds that would ultimately erode the vitality fo the Church in the early postwar period." The Church today " is still grappling with, and largely defined by, the challenges first posed by the collapse of the Catholic ghetto and the spread of crabgrass Catholicism."

An America 250 Pilgrimage In Support of Immigrants

 

Yesterday, some 60+ parishioners and others went on pilgrimage to Liberty Island to pray for America on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and to identify with and express support for immigrants, past, present, and future. 

We began with Mass at Our Lady of Victory Church on William Street and a rousing homily by Paulist Father Bruce Nieli, who was inte inspiration behind the event. We then walked to Castle Clinton and the Battery Park Terminal, praying the Rosary along the way, with stops in front of the National Museum of the American Indian and the Saint Elizabeth Seton Shrine. The first decade was prayed in thanksgiving for the immigrants of the past, whose faith and labor built the Church and country we have inherited. The second was for appreciation and justice for Native peoples, that our national celebration be marked by honest memory and deeper reconciliation.. The third decade was for all who serve immigrant families through works of mercy and for the strength of those families to endure. The fourth was for immigrants and asylum seekers presently in transit or waiting, that their dignity be upheld in the in-between. The final decade was for all the future immigrants to our country and that the nation's next 250 years be shaped by welcome rather than fear.

From the Battery, we took the ferry to Liberty Island, where we heard Emma Lazarus' famous poem New Colossus, which transformed the meaning of that monument into a beacon of hope for generations of newcomers to America, and which famously concludes:

"Give me your tired, your poor,                                                                                                  Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,                                                                           The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.                                                                                Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,                                                                            I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Americans All!

Who is an American? Who is a citizen? That question was definitively answered by the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which famously begins: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

Ratified in 1868, this clause was designed to overturn the infamous Dred Scott decision (Dred Scott v. Sandford, 1857), which had excluded African-Americans from U.S. citizenship. Subsequently, in United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), the Supreme Court affirmed the plain meaning of the amendment, clarifying that this guarantee of citizenship extends to all born in the U.S., including children born to non-citizens. (The "subject to the jurisdiction" clause effectively exempts children of foreign diplomats or of enemy forces during a hostile occupation.)

In response to the most recent challenge to this clear constitutional guarantee by an Executive Order issued by the Trump Administration in 2025, a 6-3 Supreme Court decision (Trump v. Barbara) has struck down that attempt to end birthright citizenship for children born to undocumented or temporarily present parents. The Court's majority ruled that children born in the U.S. to "unlawfully or temporarily present" parents are still within the nation's jurisdiction, again guaranteeing this precious constitutional right that defines our nation as it approaches its 250th anniversary this week.

In his Majority Opinion, Chief Justice Roberts explained that under early English law, children who were born in Britain automatically became British subjects. “This view crossed the Atlantic with the colonists—and was adopted with little fanfare after the Revolution,” Roberts wrote. After the Civil War, the 14th Amendment was adopted to repudiate the Supreme Court’s pre-war 1857 ruling that a Black person whose ancestors were brought to this country and sold as enslaved persons was not entitled to any protection from the federal courts because he or she was not a U.S. citizen. In so doing, the Chief Justice asserted, the framers of that amendment intended to “permanently enshrine” the existing understanding of birthright citizenship. “A child born on American soil and subject to American law was made an American citizen.”

“Citizenship, then and now,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “was the right to have rights—to freely participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land.’ We keep that promise today.”

Obviously, that is good news. The sad news, however, is that at least three of the Justices were willing to set aside the plain text of the 14th amendment. A fourth also agreed with the dissenters that the 14th amendment does not automatically confer universal birthright citizenship, but voted with the majority on the grounds that the President lacked authority to act as he did by an executive order, because that violated the Immigration and Nationality Act. That law currently grants citizenship to those born in the U.S. and "subject to the jurisdiction thereof." Therefore, the President cannot use an executive order to override that congressional statute. 

Had the majority been looking for a narrower ground on which to rule, Chief Justice Roberts could have made that argument, striking down the President's order but avoiding answering the fundamental constitutional question. But that would have possibly opened the door to Congress to change the basis of citizenship by mere legislation, which would have been an insufferable outcome. Thankfully, the majority opted for the fundamental constitutional argument.

All of which highlights how tenuous, how fragile, even our most fundamental constitutional guarantees have become in the hands of this Supreme Court. 

Protomartyrs of Rome

According to tradition, the city of Rome was founded on April 21, 753 BC, by twin brothers, Romulus and Remus, whose father was Mars, the god of war. But the two argued about which hill to build on; and, when Romulus began building his city wall, Remus ridiculed his work by jumping over the wall. Romulus responded by killing him - thus determining which one Rome would be named after! In time, Rome would become the greatest city in the world, the capital of the greatest empire the world had ever yet known.

 

To that same city, some eight centuries later, came two men, Peter and Paul, brothers not by blood, but by their common faith in Jesus Christ, who had called them to be apostles. The Christian community they found in Rome was small, socially and politically insignificant - an easy target when the Emperor needed scapegoats to blame for a destructive fire. Among those martyred in that 1st Roman persecution of the Church were the apostles Peter and Paul. The anonymous early Roman martyrs we commemorate today were martyred before Saints Peter and Paul. Their martyrdom was famously  documented by the secular Roman historian Tacitus .

 

The old Rome of Romulus – proud, powerful, pagan Rome, based on the murder of one brother by another – was, for all its accomplishments and authentic grandeur, a human state like any other, a warring conqueror conquered in turn by other warring conquerors. The new Christian Rome of Peter and Paul conquered that old Rome, but in a new way. Proud, powerful, pagan Rome, founded on the murder of one brother by another, was in turn conquered by the faith that empowered Peter and Paul as brothers-in-Christ to evangelize an empire and die, along with so many other early Roman martyrs, together as witnesses to a new way of life.

 

As we recall these first Roman martyrs, let us in turn – as Saint Augustine once recommended recalling their leaders Peter and Paul this – “embrace what they believed, their life, their labors, their sufferings, their preaching, and their confession of faith” [Sermon 295, 8].

 

Homily for the Protomartyrs of Rome, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, June 30, 2026.

Photo: Robert Reid (1862-1929), The Martyrdom of St. Paul, based on 2 Timothy 4:7, "I have kept the faith."

 

As We Approach Our 250th

 

This week, the United States will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, “when our country claimed its place among the family of nations,” an occasion for giving thanks “for what has been achieved” and asking divine help “for the work that still remains.” [Collect for Independence Day, U.S. Roman Missal].

 

On Independence Day, we honor the great legacy left for us, often at great sacrifice, by generations past, most of them immigrants to this new land, to whom we remain linked in a great social compact, bounded to one another, both past and present, for the sake of the future. We celebrate our past history as a nation, our present life together, and our hope for our common future.

 

As Americans, we share in the benefits bequeathed us by our country’s founders, whose legacy we receive with respect and celebrate with gratitude. We are the heirs of immigrants who came to this country in response to its promises of economic opportunity and political freedom. For generations, Catholic immigrants have brought our faith to this land and enriched this society with a strong network of Catholic institutions, which have served Americans of all backgrounds, contributing a distinctly Catholic sensibility to the American experiment.

 

Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel [Matthew 10:37-42] reflect the high value in which hospitality and welcoming were held in his society, something also illustrated in our reading from the Book of Kings [2 Kings 4:8-11, 14-16a]. The Shunamite woman did more than just give Elisha a cup of cold water. She gave him dinner and furnished a room for him! In this, she foreshadowed the generous women in the Gospels, like Martha and Mary of Bethany, who offered hospitality to Jesus and his disciples, welcoming them into their home, serving ever since as models for the Church and the high spiritual value the Church has placed on hospitality and welcoming down through the centuries right up to our own time.

Having himself as a child been a political refugee from Herod’s terror, Jesus knew from personal experience the stress of leaving one’s homeland and facing an uncertain welcome in another land.

 

Inspired by Jesus’ own words in his parable about the Last Judgment, “I was a stranger and your welcomed me,” Saint Benedict’s Rule for monks famously prescribed that all guests who present themselves be welcomed as if they were Christ himself. Nor have hospitality and welcoming been confined to monasteries. When 17-year old Annie Moore crossed the threshold of the New World as the first immigrant to pass through the new Ellis Island immigration Facility on January 1, 1892, she was welcomed by, among others, Father Callahan of the Mission of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, who blessed her and gave her a silver coin, an expression of the historic role of the American Catholic community – itself throughout its history a community of immigrants – in providing hospitality and welcome  to generation after generation of new arrivals, in this land and nation of immigrants.

 

Annie Moore’s story – along with the stories of so many others, among them my own grandparents and the parents and grandparents of so many of us assembled here today – ought especially to impress themselves on our consciousness, both as Catholics and as Americans, as we prepare to celebrate our country’s 250th anniversary. For we have always been a Church of migrants and strangers, in this land and nation of immigrants, who have always been the face of our Church in this country – in our parishes and in our schools and in our other social ministries.

But, as we assemble today, as we do every Sunday, to profess our faith as migrants passing through this world en route to our final homeland, this week’s national holiday ought to remind us of our country’s complicated history: of our admirable civic and religious traditions of hospitality and welcome, worthy of comparison with the Shunamite woman and Elisha, but also of our past – and present - failures to live up to that challenge,

 

As this special anniversary approaches, we are all aware of the many difficult and divisive issues facing our country, along with the contentious arguments that command the news and dominate social media. In response to the pervasive political polarization of his own time, the founding pastor of this parish, Servant of God, Isaac Hecker (1819-1888) hoped that, as he said to Blessed Pope Pius IX, Catholicism could “act like oil on troubled waters” and so “sustain our institutions and enable our young country to realize its great destiny” [Letter, December 22, 1857, The Paulist Vocation, p. 46]. Today our faith challenges us to make Hecker’s hope a reality in response to the multiple challenges of our time.

 

Those challenges are many and do not admit easy or one-dimensional solutions. Disagreements are to be expected. As Catholics and as citizens, we are called to address our disagreements in a morally serious way that transcends simplistic sloganeering, emotional appeals to narrowly defined secular or religious identities, and the vilification of political opponents. As our American bishops reminded us over a decade ago: “Catholics may choose different ways to respond to compelling social problems, but we cannot differ on our moral obligation to help build a more just and peaceful world through morally acceptable means, so that the weak and vulnerable are protected and human rights and dignity are defended.” [USCCB, Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship (2015), 20].

 

The impending celebration of our 250th anniversary challenges us to a renewed pursuit of solidarity and mutual trust. As a society, we will always inevitably fall short of our own inclusive ideals and heroic ambitions, as just as certainly we will fall short of Jesus’ challenge of mutual hospitality to one another and to all we encounter. But by baptism into Christ, we are no longer permitted to be strangers to one another, for we have been brought beyond the ordinary human limitations of family, state, and society, and raised instead with Christ to live in newness of life [Romans 6:4], responding to one another and welcoming one another as we would never otherwise have known how to do or dared to have tried.

Homily for the 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, June 28, 2026.

Photo: Advertisement for the July 1 Semiquincentennial "Pilgrimage in Support of Immigrants" to Liberty Island.