Cover
story St.
Anthony Parish
By ARTHUR JONES
Portland, Ore.
Its 10:20 on a cool, sunny Sunday morning. St.
Anthonys parishioners are headed for Mass. For many of them, the church
is just two minutes away, along the curving path around the fountain.
These parishioners, residents of St. Anthony Village, are about 10
percent of the Mass-goers. They use canes or walkers, or steady themselves on
someones arm. Some amble along unassisted. Others ride in hand-propelled
or electric wheelchairs.
Its an informal, Lourdes-like procession of friends and
neighbors from an assisted-living accommodation along with their visitors and
their caregivers. They talk or chat. One or two from the Alzheimers units
gaze curiously at their surroundings as they head toward the 3-year-old,
375-seat church -- the first in the archdiocese designed by an all-female
architectural firm.
This is a phoenix parish. Nine years ago, Fr. Michael Maslowsky
was sent in to close it. Instead it rose up to give new life to the community
-- from the 4-month-olds in the daycare center, to nonagenarians in the village
accommodation.
For 45 years church had been the basement of the
increasingly tumbledown, finally closed parish school in this modest, changing
southeast Portland neighborhood.
In 1993, tall, trim, ascetic-looking Maslowsky, a big-league
Portland lawyer ordained in 1987, was sent in by Portlands
then-archbishop, William Levada, to assess the place. Maslowsky saw a basement
church with exposed pipes, collapsing ceiling tiles, cracked walls and
windows. Most of the property was overgrown with weeds and contained discarded
mattresses and tires. It was not a very attractive place.
The priest spent three summer months having evening Mass three
times a week and meeting for dessert with groups of parishioners. Their
faith was so strong, he said, that he resolved to find some way to keep
the parish open.
St. Anthony had land, five acres. With a committed parish team,
insights into nonprofit housing from Maslowskys business community
friends, financial support from federal tax credits and state guarantees, plus
a strong though risky commitment from Portlands Archbishop Francis George
(now Cardinal George of Chicago), Maslowsky and the parish took the plunge.
The result: A decade later, St. Anthony, with its 425 registered
families, is the new model of church for the Portland archdiocese.
The village does not dominate parish activities.
Parish outreach takes many forms -- not least people helping out
at the Goose Hollow overnight homeless shelter. Several years ago, when a
12-year-old boy in a disintegrating family needed help, one parishioner
provided a home, another helped place him in a Catholic school, a third acted
as mentor. Today, the prognosis for the youngster is great, and he is active in
the parish.
This Sunday Mass, youth director Chris Wojnar was on the altar
giving an account of parish teens wide-ranging service activities. In the
congregation was Maureen OShaughnessy. She directs the thriving religious
education program. The village model of parish encourages an easy interaction
across the age range, with seniors from the apartments sometimes helping out at
the daycare center, and children from the religious education program making
cards and little gifts to deliver to the elderly in their apartments on special
days.
The village operates as a separate entity within the parish
boundaries. It is a nonprofit organization with its own governance and
operating structure. Maslowsky is president of St. Anthony Village Enterprises,
which is developing villages at Assumption Parish in north Portland, and in
Corvallis, home of Oregon State University, where the village will include
student housing, the Newman chaplaincy and commercial space. In Roseland, in
southeast Oregon, there will be special needs housing for young adults with
physical and mental disabilities mixed in with a variety of low-income
housing.
The overriding operating structure is fairly complex. Maslowsky
has a separate entity for managing and operating the archdiocesan villages, and
another for consultation work not under the archdiocesan umbrella. The villages
are gaining wider Catholic attention. Officials in the Toledo, Ohio, diocese
and the Atlanta, Ga., archdiocese are studying the Portland projects.
At St. Anthony, the bright blue, yellow, green, rose and russet
apartment buildings surrounding the church include 16 units for independent
senior living, 84 assisted living units, and 24 Alzheimers residences.
There is a flourishing daycare center for children 4 months to 5 years,
currently at capacity with 80-plus children.
Mass is over. There is a reception and recognition lunch underway
in the parish for the village residents and caregivers. Its just before
noon. Maslowskys been and gone.
Right now hes atop a 30-foot ladder in the stripped-bare
Assumption parish church examining the blue ceiling paint. David Frye of Walsh
Builders has a steadying hand on the ladder. Deacon Robert Lukosh, who will
manage the 110-unit assisted-living facility at Assumption explains the layout
to a reporter. The facility will open in April.
The former Assumption Church -- in a region where four parishes
have been consolidated into one -- will serve as the village chapel. Lukosh is
a former engineer who, after marriage -- he and his wife have two young
children -- switched his life around, became a deacon and a prison chaplain.
Now hell be Assumptions chaplain, as well as facility
administrator.
Lessons have been learned from St. Anthony. Assumption residents
will not have to go outside to reach the chapel. Weve learned how
to better integrate the chapel into the village, said Maslowsky,
and, quite frankly, use it as a marketing strategy.
Maslowsky, on his way down the ladder, rules the blue
satisfactory, but turns thumbs down on the pastel brown for the walls.
Something lighter, cheerier, he says. Something less brown.
Picking paint, managing real estate or holding the hand of an
elderly parishioner with dementia wasnt quite what Maslowsky had
anticipated as he approached the priesthood in 1983.
He is a Nebraska-born 51-year-old Air Force brat who
graduated from high school in Japan, majored in history at Kalamazoo College in
Michigan and has a law degree from Northwestern University Law School. After
ordination he received his doctorate in theology from the Gregorian University
in Rome and presumed he might teach at the Portland seminary. Instead he was
appointed director of ministry formation. His office developed both a
masters degree program and a certification program.
The archdiocese has a cabinet form of government in which six
cabinet members (heads of departments) serve as senior advisers to the
archbishop. After two years, Maslowsky was part of the cabinet as director of
archdiocesan pastoral services with responsibilities for the elderly, campus
ministry, people with disabilities and similar issues.
Then came the St. Anthony appointment.
There was the initial idea of building a joint center with the
Korean Catholic community, which was also using the premises. But the Koreans
opted out. Maslowsky recalled, I was just praying to our Lord to show me
what he wanted us to do. And the idea of a village came to my mind. Id
spent a lot of time in Europe, England, Germany, Italy -- and it was a village
with a faith community center kind of idea.
For Maslowsky, several threads wove themselves together. He had a
parish. In his pastoral services post he had seen the graying of
the Catholic church across the archdiocese and knew elderly peoples
needs. There was land and, as a Portland lawyer, he had good contacts. Plus, as
a priest, he knows that Oregon is one of the least churched states in the
country.
I believe we can and should evangelize the elderly, he
said, and this is one way to do it. Why not, he thought, welcome
the elderly into close proximity to the parish by making it the center of their
living arrangements -- to the extent they want to take advantage of it. Some 52
percent of St. Anthonys residents are Catholic, and about another 20
percent are Christian.
The idea persisted. The grunt work began.
It didnt look as if the proposal would clear the first
hurdle, the archdiocesan finance council. But the new archbishop, George, threw
his weight behind it, and God rewarded him by making him a
cardinal, said Maslowsky with a laugh.
Catholic Portland soon had its third prelate in a decade,
Archbishop John Vlazny, previously in Winona, Minn., who is regarded around
town as a low-key leader and good listener. Vlazny was not only supportive of
St. Anthony, but has established an archdiocesan housing office and provided
official and financial impetus to the new projects.
Maslowsky admits that finding the St. Anthony financing was
tricky -- because our mission was to provide care for the low-income
population. Seventy-eight percent of the residents are on Medicaid.
The millions in basic construction funding come from federal tax
credits and bonds sold under state authorization. Plus there was $1.5 million
raised from private donors. That money helped with the childcare facility --
and with the raised gardens where residents, parishioners and the children can
have plots for vegetables and flowers.
The entire five-acre site was razed, the church placed at the
center and the village built around it. The financing has always been
touch-and-go, said Maslowsky. Were subject to fluctuations in
the economy. Oregon is facing a severe cut in Medicaid funding, the governor
has cut Medicaid reimbursement to assisted living facilities -- and Im
spending a lot of time at the state legislature testifying. Our bonds are at a
high interest rate, but with the archbishops support were going to
be able to refinance at a lower rate.
The village has a few market-rate apartments and plans
to open some more. The hope is that the market-rate units will help provide
some additional funding, particularly for the Alzheimers unit. (When the
elderly are dying the village staff try hard -- unless specialized nursing is
essential -- to keep their residents until the end.)
Maslowsky is full-time pastor and full-time real estate man, but a
move is in the air. The priest expects to be reassigned sometime in the year
ahead. He has no idea where. Whatever the job, however, his role in the
villages will continue.
Monday morning. One of the village residents was out, determinedly
taking her morning exercise, pushing her walker along the village paths.
Inside, resident Maureen Dentler, 81, talked about her transition
from her own apartment to the assisted living unit. She moved because her
children worried about her living alone.
I love it. I like people, she said, and she likes her
room. There, she reads and writes poetry. She talked about her 10 children and
many grandchildren, and some of the hard times. We held hands and sat quietly
during tearful moments. But she quickly brightened and agreed to bring out some
poetry.
For decades her poetry, along with her prayers, have kept her
buoyed.
She wont give poetry readings, and only rarely shares it.
But appropriately, there was one about St. Anthony. One from a few years
earlier, though, caught the flavor of aging gracefully -- the ability to laugh
at oneself. (See poem below.)
St. Anthonys -- and Fr. Mikes --
reputation is spreading. He provides a weekly commentary on a local TV station
and through the parish Web site, www.fathermikeonline.com. Maslowsky has
a small but growing following in India, a place hes never been.
Thats because parishioner Ed Newbigin sends Maslowskys Sunday
homily overnight on a disk to Mexico where his son, John, who runs a branch of
the family agricultural sprinklers firm, downloads it onto the Web site and
distributes it to the world.
A poem by a resident of St.
Anthony Village: |
A Writers Consternation
There are juices seemingly flowing In this
partially rusted out brain For ideas come tumbling and rolling With the
speed of a thundering train.
I dont know what to do with these
words Left orphaned and hanging in air As they leap through my head and
then vanish While I sit bewildered and stare.
I hunger to capture
these thoughts Before they become just a glimmer But one should possess a
high-voltage brain Instead of one turned on to simmer.
-- Maureen Dentler |
Arthur Jones is NCR editor-at-large. His e-mail address
is ajones96@aol.com
National Catholic Reporter, March 15,
2002
|