Many of you don’t seem to understand that where some of us live (I am in Appalachia) the Catholic Church either does not exist or is considered a “church for foreigners and outsiders”.
I feel your pain.
I’ve lived my entire life less than 100 miles west of Muscle Shoals, so I come from the same culture and background that you do. The town I live in has a fairly large proportion of Catholics because it’s an industrial area. But the Catholic population of the entire diocese is just over 2.5% of the overall population. Most (not all but most) of the Catholics here are yankees (no offense guys) that came down to the delta after the Civil War and then gradually made it over to the hills. Otherwise they came down with the factories in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Another contingent gradually drifted up from New Orleans. A small portion of us are homegrown converts. I would have never looked twice at the Church myself, if I had not married a Catholic girl.
So what’s the problem? The problem is just what you said it is. Southerners generally consider the Catholic Church to be for yankees or foreigners. What’s a yankee? A yankee is anyone from north of Kentucky or west of Arkansas. To Southerners yankees come off as different, strange, sometimes downright rude. They don’t talk like us, dress like us, or act like us. Likewise, liturgical celebrations are very different from the Protestant, Evangelical or Pentecostal traditions we know and love. It’s like growing up on black-eyed peas, cornbread and sweet tea all your life, and then all of a sudden someone tries to serve you sushi.
Another big problem with the Church spreading in the South is the almost complete neglect of evangelism and community outreach by local Catholics. The attitude seems to be, “If they’re interested they’ll come here.” Yankees see asking someone else about their faith, and inviting them to Church as being rude. Southerners think it’s rude if you don’t ask. We grew up talking about Jesus like he lives down the road. Yankees grew up being taught that asking someone about their faith is like asking someone about how much money they make.
If you are interested, and if you do show up at Mass, it’s not likely to be a very welcoming environment. When Southerners visit another Church they expect to be greeted warmly, asked about themselves and their families, and maybe even invited out to lunch. When Catholics, especially yankees go to Mass they want to pray alone and quietly before Mass, and then hit the door running afterward. This comes off to Southerners as being stuck up, aloof and unconcerned about the new faces in the pew next to you.
Another problem is that in most small Southern towns the Catholic Church is the smallest congregation in town by far. Again, we’re very lucky because we live in a town with a relatively huge Catholic population. But in the towns all around us the Catholic parishes are tiny. In typical a town of 5000 people the First Baptist Church may have 1500 members, whereas the Catholic Church may have around 75. On top of that there may or may not be a Mass every Sunday. It’s not unusual at all to have one priest covering 3 or more counties. The upshot is that parish life, compared to say the typical First Baptist Church, is seriously lacking to say the very least. There is one family in our parish that drives over 60 miles one way to Church every Sunday because there is no Catholic Church closer to them that has an adequate religious education and CYO program for their kids. You have to work really hard to be Catholic in most of the rural South.
Yet another problem is that most Southerners know absolutely nothing at all about what the Catholic Church teaches. This is not to fault Southerners. We don’t know what the Church teaches because we have no reason to know. We were raised Baptist, all our family is Baptist, and all our friends are Baptist. We may get into theological discussions with Church of Christ folks or Methodists, but Catholics are not even on the radar screen. Even worse, the ones that are “informed” about the Church usually get their information from Jack Chick or John Hagee. Why would anyone visit a church that follows the ant-Christ?
Of course, once you learn what the Church truly teaches, once you get to know people, once you fall in love with the Mass, these differences disappear, you see the truth and beauty that is the Church, you feel right at home, and you see that all the hard work and sacrifice was well worth it. But, this takes time, effort, patience and prayer.
Were it not for the Glenmary priests and brothers, and thank God for them, there would literally be zero Catholic presence in large parts of the rural South.
glenmary.org/
What do you think Sandmountainsli? What can we do to improve the situation?
