Hospitality pays off in Biloxi parish - Mississippi

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 17, 1997 by Arthur Jones

BILOXI, Miss. -- In 1699, on Feb. 13, when the French nobleman Pierre Lemoyne, Sieur d'Iberville, touched land in Biloxi Bay, his chaplain, Recollect Fr. Anastasius Douay, said the first Mass on the sand.

Three hundred years later, where Lemoyne's expedition lifted their heads to heaven to praise the Triune God and saw sky, they would now see towering bayfront gambling casinos crammed with worshipers whose trinity is three bars three bells or three dollar signs.

Biloxi has thousands of slot machines 6.5 million tourists and 55,000 residents -- 22,000 of them Catholics. This is the "Queen City," Mississippi's "Little Easy" to New Orleans' "Big Easy," just 80 miles away. It also is home to Nativity parish.

That is the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which was just the big downtown church until Biloxi became a diocese 20 years ago. It is a handsome 1902 structure, the third on the site, and cozy inside for a cathedral.

Nativity's parish-wide ministry is summed up in one word: welcome.

How welcoming? Two years ago the Air Force posted single dad and aeronautics engineer Frank Riske to nearby Keesler Air Force Base. Not long after, he turned the handle on the parish office door, stepped in and met the parish team, and within weeks his daughter, Katelin, was in the parish school and he was signed up to teach ninth grade religious education classes. These days Katelin is trying out on the clarinet with the young adult choir and Riske is also helping with the altar server schedule.

Chris Kennedy came to Biloxi from Indianapolis to run the local branch of the family business. The Notre Dame University-educated Kennedy joined the Nativity choir to meet people. "Within two weeks, almost a total stranger, I was invited home to dinner by the young man I sat next to in choir. The difference between here and the North is that people are so very welcoming."

Then someone told him, "There's a sweet nurse you need to meet."

"I heard him sing before I met him," said Kim Kennedy, now his wife. "It was on St. Joseph's feast day and I turned to my mother and said, `Who is that singing with that beautiful voice?'"

The Kennedys have two young children. Chris directs the young adult choir at the 5:30 p.m. Sunday liturgy, a gathering that attracts many of the parish's younger members, including the Mercy Cross high school students and parish Catholic Youth Organization members.

Ministry of welcome

Look who else feels welcome: Half the current pastoral council members and its past three presidents are converts. Obviously, there's something attractive and compelling about the ministry of welcome practiced at Nativity.

This coastal strip of Mississippi south of east-west Interstate 10, which trims the bottom of the state like a lace hem, is serious Catholic territory -- try naming one other U.S. city that's 40 percent Catholic. "They don't all go to church," said Gulf Pine Catholic editor Shirley Henderson, abut they surely do want to be buried from it." The mayor, A.J. Holloway, and many local politicians are Catholic, so too much of the professional class. Bob Mahoney Jr., who runs Mary Mahoney's Old French House Restaurant in a 1734 building at Magnolia and Water Streets, is Catholic. So is the restaurant. The menu declares that the restaurant was "established Ascension Thursday, May 7, 1964."

Mahoney has a Catholic twist on Biloxi's gaming. He explained with a laugh, "Biloxi has eight Catholic parishes. That's how the city voted gambling in." By contrast, he said, neighboring Gulfport, with many Baptist churches and only five Catholic parishes, voted gambling down.

Biloxi's Bishop Joseph Lawson Howze, the first African- American ordinary to head a U.S. Catholic diocese, has written columns about gambling -- not condemning the casinos but explaining Catholic teaching on the topic.

Howze, this year marking his 20th anniversary, likes to ruminate on such things. The memento-filled office where this reporter found him working on his column on the Eucharist is more like a comfortable den -- one armchair is covered with an afghan made by his late mother's last surviving sister.

Biloxi's waterfront neon and glitz hasn't swamped the city yet, but with the pace of building, it's threatening. Two decades ago the city was a Little Easy vacation spot. Conservatives from upstate would come here "to let their hair down," said parish stalwart Gwen Golotte. That was when Biloxi was more dependent on canning -- oysters, shrimp, fish and vegetables -- than gaming.

Golotte, who doesn't gamble, will hear out someone who is against gambling and then remark that people who once were shucking oysters for minimum wages now have jobs with security and 401Ks. "We're a bit more freewheeling -- and caring -- here," said Golotte, whose late husband, Wilfred, carried the genes of early arrivals -- his forebears were both Spanish and French.

Nativity's hospitality

If Southern hospitality has a mecca, Biloxi is a contender. At Mass, if a baby is fussing, it's not unheard of for someone in the pew to lean over and say, "Give me the baby for a while" so the parents can gain a little peace and prayerful quiet.