New generation finds a home at old Old St. Pat's

National Catholic Reporter, Sept 25, 1998 by Tim Unsworth

CHICAGO -- While Abraham and Sarah, already old and feeble, sat outside their tent near the Great Oak of Mamre during the hottest part of the day, three men came calling. Abraham ran to welcome them, offering them water to slake their thirst and clean their feet. Later, Sarah prepared rolls, roasted calf and fragrant curds to feed them.

Abraham and Sarah were no dopes. The three strangers turned out to be angels.

Centuries later, Fr. Jack Wall, pastor of Chicago's innovative Old St. Patrick's Parish, works the curb outside the city's second oldest church, greeting contemporary angels arriving to be fed at a sanctuary that was once on life support. He cites the Abraham and Sarah story often. It could serve as his informal mission statement for Old St. Pat's.

St. Pat's has managed successfully to convey a welcoming spirit to virtually every staff member and volunteer. It avoids the often tedious, self-congratulatory mission statements of other parishes that don't even answer their phones.

When Wall became pastor of Old St. Pat's in 1983, it was already 137 years old. It had experienced several lifetimes since Fr. Walter Quarter, the brother of Chicago's first bishop, William Quarter, built a wooden church for $750 to serve the immigrant Irish who were crowding into "patches" that marked their territory.

Ordained in 1968, Jack Wall had done parish work and was a vocation director for the archdiocese when Fr. Steve O'Donnell retired and Wall (with 15 others) threw his biretta in the ring for the pastor's job. A few of the other applicants were in search of a sinecure. The parish is in a virtually abandoned neighborhood that enjoyed the lowest crime rate in the city, since no one lived there. They would only have to keep the church's 14 statues dusted and greet the politicians for the annual St. Patrick's Day parade, which had been founded there.

Other applicants wanted an arts-centered parish or one for former prisoners on parole. But Wall, who often drove by the dreary church complex, confided his dream to his friend, Fr. John Cusick.

The church's base of registered parishioners was down to four, including two political workers, the parish cook and likely the pastor's golden retriever. It served as a kind of drive-through Mass site for cops, building workers, union organizers from the many unions headquartered on Halsted Street, printers from Printers' Row and some commuters:

For young adults

Wall, an original thinker, wanted to create a parish for young adults -- one with a clear ministry with faith and work connections. The idea caught the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin's imagination, especially when Wall agreed to continue his vocation work as well.

Old St. Pat's (called "old" to distinguish it from four other parishes of the same name, two of which were actually founded earlier, but outside the city) has a rich history. The present church, built in 1853, missed the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 by inches. It was declared a landmark in 1964.

"There is always an ethnocentric moment in the life of a church," Jack Wall said. While St. Pat's was never a national parish, its Irish links were very strong, and Wall has successfully and nonexclusively tapped into this link.

Around 1910, national parishes began to give way to territorial parishes, but the national links never quite vanished. If circumstances warrant, bishops may still organize parishes non-territorially, according to rite, nationality or language, in accordance with special religious and socio-cultural needs. St. Pat's remains territorial but the boundaries have been shattered by the automobile, which can whiz the faithful by a dozen parishes to find a church that welcomes them like Sarah and Abraham.

"We've created a new model Wall said. "The old model was marriage, mortgage and children. And that model remains a good one." Wall spoke in a second floor conference room of a renovated former Brink's Inc. armored truck facility that adjoins the church complex. The first floor is filled with the archdiocesan archives.

"But our model is different," he continued. "We became an adult parish, filled with young, mobile people who are unmarried or who married late and are childless. Many of these people invited their empty-nester parents to come here. Then, many of the younger generation had children and moved to more traditional parishes with the promise that they would return someday. But they often left their parents behind. So, from Day I we've had a richer mix than we expected."

Parish marketing

Wall began his parish marketing by inviting. He extended invitations to the Young Irish Fellowship, the Notre Dame Club of Chicago and other groups to use the church's facilities for their meetings or to watch Chicago Bears games or to work out-in the tacky old gym. "We even let a 16-piece band practice here. There was no one in the neighborhood, so they didn't bother a soul. In return they promised to play for our block party." (St. Patrick's sponsors "The World's Largest Block Party," a two night, well-organized riot that nets them over $300,000, a significant slice of the $1.2 million budget -- school budget not included.)