During my adult life, I've lived in cities on both coasts and in suburbs, both inner ring and farther out. While I speak here only from my own personal experience (a dangerous detour into anecdotal musings from an empiricist), I don't recognize the descriptions of community and connection and responsiveness attributed to urban and suburban settings in some of the postings.
When I lived in cities (and I lived in a typical urban setting of apartments, not detached house neighborhoods), people generally lived as strangers right next to each other, rarely showing any concerns about their geographic area outside the door to their own apartment. Social connections were formed in non-geographic ways, by groups of friends from church or work or otherwise. By contrast, each suburban neighborhood in which I have lived has been a community of families in which everyone, to a greater or lesser extent, participated in the community, knew their neighbors, relied upon each other, etc. And, of course, for those who work in a metropolitan setting, the suburb provides the greatest opportunities for raising children with the kinds of opportunities that many of us experienced in an earlier generation: safe play areas, the ability to roam the neighborhood playing with all the kids in the area, bike riding on non-busy streets, open spaces of green lawns, etc.
Moreover, while my urban neighbors generally saw care for the unfortunate as the duty of their municipal and state governments (which were hardly worthy of that reliance), my suburban neighbors have been active community leaders, volunteers for public services, contributors, etc. Those in need not only have not been neglected, but have been more effectively served. In my current community of Eden Prairie outside Minneapolis, we have one of the largest gatherings of Somali immigrants in the country, who are becoming well integrated into the work force, the schools, etc. Indeed, I would guess that the Somali immigrant experience in the Eden Prairie suburb has been much more positive and progressive than it would have been in most urban settings.
While I am sure that others have had different experiences in both urban and suburban settings with respect to community in general, I feel more confident in saying that one of the signal differences between urban and suburban settings is the responsiveness and accountability of local government. When there recently was a matter of concern in my neighborhood, I not only felt comfortable contacting the chief of police but was able to spend a half an hour discussing with him the trends in the area and learning about the thoughtful policies the police were adopting to deal with certain impacts of commercial development nearby. I've had the same experience in other suburbs, actually knowing members of the city council, seeing that officials elected and appointed responsive to their constituents, etc. That definitely has not been my experience in urban settings, where officials most often are remote (partly by attitude, partly because of the large numbers of persons in the city which prevents creating relationships with very many), where governmental offices are bureaucratic and coldly unresponsive, etc.
From the standpoint of subsidiarity, I submit we are more likely to find it working well in rural and suburban communities than in the typical urban setting.
Greg Sisk (blogging from Rome)
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
As long as we're throwing bombs in the spirit of Christian fellowship, I'll try one of my own. I agree with Rick's non-endorsed proposition that Catholic schools are important. I do not agree that making it possible for all Catholic kids to attend Catholic schools is the most important business of the parish. Rather, I believe that the most important business of the parish is shaping Catholics to be followers of Christ. That process should not stop at high school graduation. If there was one-tenth of the emphasis placed on Christian education for adults in the average parish as there is on keeping the parish school afloat, lives would be dramatically transformed. Further, we should never mistake the true objective here (and I'm not accusing Rick of doing so): the goal is not to have all Catholic kids in Catholic schools; the goal is to facilitate every Catholic's walk with Christ. Some Catholic schools, in my limited observation, seem so market-driven that I am not altogether certain what sort of spiritual formation occurs there. If we're talking about providing kids with a deep grounding in their faith tradition, I'll take my evangelical Sunday School / youth group upbringing over what goes on in most of the parishes I've experienced, including those with schools. My kids' education in the faith has to be more than a periodic crash course in whatever sacrament is up next. I don't mean to knock Catholic schools, but sometimes I think we are so focused on institution-preservation that we can lose sight of the reasons why we have the institutions in the first place.
Since we're all friends, and (sort of) in response to Rob and Lisa, let me toss out, without necessarily endorsing myself, a bomb:
THE thing -- the most important thing, besides the Sacraments -- that Catholic parishes (urban, rural, and suburban) should be doing (and that dioceses should be doing) is running schools. This is because the Church should be doing what it takes -- whatever it takes -- to make it really possible (and by "possible," I mean to include "possible given the special needs of many children") for all -- rich, middle-class, and poor -- urban and suburban Catholics to send their children to Catholic schools, which is where all Catholic children should be.
Discuss. =-)
Thanks to all who have picked up on my invitation to discuss "CST and the City." The conversation has taken an interesting turn, but not the one I intended, and not necessarily the most important one. To be sure, the question of whether the suburbs or the city are more "Catholic" is worth thinking about, but it is largely of intramural concern, and hard to answer outside of the historical context of the demise of "thick" urban Catholicism in places such as the northeast and the big midwestern cities. There seems to me a larger question to consider: does CST have a conception of how our physical communities express the values that make up the common good? That conception presumably would address the needs of all people, and not just Catholics. It may have something to do with the concept of "sacred space" -- but more to do with an understanding of how physical settings contibute to the formation of solidarity, to the creation of vital subsidiary institutions, to strengthening the family as a social and spitual institution, the sense of reciprocal obligation and so on. And what do the CST texts have to say about all this? What are the connections between these CST concepts and secular movements such as the New Urbanism?
-- Mark
A reader passes on some good "reformed" references and sources on urbanism. Click here and / or here.
I share Eduardo's concerns about the suburbs' implications for justice, community, and the environment, and I believe that CST should accordingly have something to say about suburban life. I also believe that the attraction of the suburbs is understandable -- even natural -- and is supported by CST to the extent that parents are encouraged to turn their hearts toward home, replacing Plato's rejection of exclusive relationships and particularized care-giving with preferential commitments to our own offspring. The primacy of the family may help pave the path to the suburbs. When I see the world through the eyes of my children, I would much rather provide them with good schools, a lawn, and a quiet, safe neighborhood.
We must, of course, balance our family-centric focus with a concern for the broader community. But what does that mean? Is it enough for me to flee the city, but vote for candidates who will address urban problems with my tax money? Or should I commit myself -- and my children -- to the city, warts and all. I have a friend who moved with his wife and young children to the Desire housing projects in New Orleans, reasoning that it would be a joke for him to claim a commitment to the needs of that community while retreating to the suburbs every night. I readily admit that I have not -- and probably will not -- make such a sacrifice. I have lived in many urban settings, but my decisions on where to live were always shaped by quality of life considerations, not by any abstract commitment to the city and its inhabitants. But my friend's example has always stayed with me.
As for Lisa's question, I do live in the city and I do send our kids to public school. It's a good school, though, so I can't claim some sort of noble purpose. On the question of special needs kids and urban Catholic parishes, I assume it's primarily a matter of resources. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.) If an urban parish had the financial support of the suburban parish that recruited a special needs student, is there any reason to believe that its school would be resistant to taking in those students? While the resistance is certainly cause to head to the suburbs for parents of such students now, isn't the resistance at least partially a result of other parents heading to the suburbs over the previous decades? If state-funded school vouchers were a reality, is there any evidence that Catholic schools would still keep out special needs students?
And let me throw one other observation into the mix, which may be more provocative than I intend. Some of the more frustratingly dormant parishes that I have attended have been urban parishes. I realize that I cannot judge an individual's spiritual life by their exterior, but still . . . parishes where no one sings, no one greets visitors, and the average pulse rate during services seems to hover around 27 are difficult for me to reconcile with the life-changing message of the Gospel. At one parish in Queens, I was excited to learn that there was an adult education committee. Then I learned that its sole responsibility was to replenish the informational pamphlets in the rack at the back of the church. Are there lots of "dormant" suburban parishes? Of course. Are there benefits to living in close proximity to others within an urban parish? Undoubtedly. But there is, in my view (here comes the provocative part), a cost to a religious life that is so much part of the cultural background that it never seems to make it to the foreground. When we are Catholic simply because that's who we are and that's what we do, that seems (at least to my evangelical sensibility) a recipe for complacency. Without a personal decision to embrace the Gospel as truth, Catholicism can simply serve as the wallpaper of our lives. In the places I've lived where virtually everyone is Catholic, the parishes have been much less "vibrant" than in places where the majority is non-Catholic. This does not correspond to a clean urban/suburban distinction, but it is a problem I've observed in several urban parishes.
Apparently, my last post wasn't clear enough, but I was not saying that suburbs are not really Catholic. I was talking about my feelings and perceptions, which I then discounted by noting their likely origins in the particularly urban experience of American Catholic immigrants. Nor is it the case that Catholic people might not have good reasons for choosing to relocate to the suburbs and live a vibrant spiritual life once they get there. The more important question for me is, instead, whether suburban development patterns raise questions that have traditionally been of concern to CST. I suggested a few possibilities. Neither Elizabeth nor Fr. Araujo's posts really go to that question, but I'm curious what they (or anyone else) think.
