Catholic Ghetto?

[manualman]

I grew up in the disasterous 70’s. I never knew the mass in Latin (though we did retain the Kyrie and Agnus Dei for quite some years). But as I got older, I would frequently hear people refer in the past tense to something they called the “catholic ghetto.”

Apparently, this was an entire subculture. A world within a world with its own music, art, literature, social organizations, employment networking, educational systems, health care institutions and so on. Whenever I have heard the term, it was always disparaging (i.e. “catholics came out of the ghetto after Vatican II”).

Was this just a giant scam or what? THIS is the ghetto! Literature in this culture stinks, the art is a joke. Health care is increasingly a pocket picking enterprise and the social organizations I have tried out are all about business contacts, sexual meat markets or sports cults.

A genuinely catholic subculture sounds AWESOME! Where did it go. How could the previous generation have surrendered it for THIS? Somebody explain!

 

[JHow]

I don’t have answers for you, but it is something I sense as well, that we live in a period of cultural decline. I’m sure the next poster will tell you to get up and write that great novel next great work of art (fill in the blank here) yourself - but what is missing is the audience, which is to say, the culture that will appreciate it.

 

[challam2010]

I’m not a sociologist and I’m not certain how accurate my memory is on this subject, and I certainly don’t claim its a complete analysis – but the “Catholic ghetto” referred to the phenomenon in the 19th and early-to-mid 20th centuries when Catholics were:

A) Immigrants, manual laborers, poor, living in their own real ghetto with those of their same culture (Irish/Polish/Lithuanian, etc.)

B) Very much denigrated by the moneyed and powerful WASP culture – the capitalists who financed the expansion of America and employed Catholic laborers and the politicians who ran the country (Joe Fitzgeral excluded, of course).

C) Even though numerically the Catholics were probably the larger population, we were marginalized by bias and discrimination primarily because of our religion. We were “ghettoized” by our faithfulness to the Roman church and our “very weird customs” – not eating meat on Friday, sending our kids to parochial schools, bearing more children than many families – and our immigrant roots.

In the 1950’s, the western city I grew up in had nine parishes, each with 4-5 Sunday Masses that were packed. The Methodists had one church, Presbyterians one church – yet we were the oddballs, the ostracized, the outcasts. I had NO idea that Catholicism was then the largest religion in the world and I really did feel “different” because of my faith (not in a good way, either).

I’m sure there’s a ton of better and more specific info on the internet – do some research if you’re really interested in this.

 

[dixieagle]

I grew up in the disasterous 70’s. I never knew the mass in Latin (though we did retain the Kyrie and Agnus Dei for quite some years). But as I got older, I would frequently hear people refer in the past tense to something they called the “catholic ghetto.”

Apparently, this was an entire subculture. A world within a world with its own music, art, literature, social organizations, employment networking, educational systems, health care institutions and so on. Whenever I have heard the term, it was always disparaging (i.e. “catholics came out of the ghetto after Vatican II”).

Was this just a giant scam or what? THIS is the ghetto! Literature in this culture stinks, the art is a joke. Health care is increasingly a pocket picking enterprise and the social organizations I have tried out are all about business contacts, sexual meat markets or sports cults.

A genuinely catholic subculture sounds AWESOME! Where did it go. How could the previous generation have surrendered it for THIS? Somebody explain!

That was the world in which I grew up in the 50s and 60s in the Boston area. Life centered around the Church, and virtually everyone I knew was Catholic - Irish or Italian, with the very occasional Polish person in the mix. I remember being astonished the first time I met a “public”, as kids who didn’t go to parochial school were called. People who weren’t Catholic may as well have been Martians, they seemed so foreign. We lived in a fairly large town, but folks pretty much knew each other.

I think that Catholic people at first moved into the same area as a means of self-preservation; it was certainly true that well-established Bostonians hadn’t welcomed them with open arms. As they assimilated and became the dominant religion, they didn’t feel the need to congregate so much. Understandable, but something was lost.

 

[Bob_Aliano]

I’m not a sociologist and I’m not certain how accurate my memory is on this subject, and I certainly don’t claim its a complete analysis – but the “Catholic ghetto” referred to the phenomenon in the 19th and early-to-mid 20th centuries when Catholics were:

A) Immigrants, manual laborers, poor, living in their own real ghetto with those of their same culture (Irish/Polish/Lithuanian, etc.)

B) Very much denigrated by the moneyed and powerful WASP culture – the capitalists who financed the expansion of America and employed Catholic laborers and the politicians who ran the country (Joe Fitzgeral excluded, of course).

C) Even though numerically the Catholics were probably the larger population, we were marginalized by bias and discrimination primarily because of our religion. We were “ghettoized” by our faithfulness to the Roman church and our “very weird customs” – not eating meat on Friday, sending our kids to parochial schools, bearing more children than many families – and our immigrant roots.

In the 1950’s, the western city I grew up in had nine parishes, each with 4-5 Sunday Masses that were packed. The Methodists had one church, Presbyterians one church – yet we were the oddballs, the ostracized, the outcasts. I had NO idea that Catholicism was then the largest religion in the world and I really did feel “different” because of my faith (not in a good way, either).

I’m sure there’s a ton of better and more specific info on the internet – do some research if you’re really interested in this.

Let me start by stating I’m Polish/Italian by descent; my Polish Mother was born immediately after her parents arrived here; my Sicilian Father was 12 when they came over.

My Polish Grandparents lived next to Italians, across the street from some Rom Gypsies and down the street from Irish and Jewish families. My Italian Grandparents lived in an Irish and Jewish neighborhood. My best friends were Jewish, Irish and several Protestants although I eventually dated a Catholic Italian girl. I attended a Catholic school taught by Nuns and Jesuits at which there were non-Catholic students including Jewish students. Local restaurants were more than happy to have non-meat items on the menu on Friday, I have attended Seders at friend’s homes and they have been to my home at Christmas, we had Archbishop Sheen on the TV and local newspapers generally spoke highly of Catholics and presented our views on controversial topics fairly. There was never a question about displaying a Crèche or Menorah along side a Christmas Tree (not Holiday Tree) at the local civic park, we called it the Commons, or in storefronts.

So I have to ask: What Ghetto?

 

[HCC]

I think the term “Catholic ghetto” had more to do with ethnic-Catholic communities who faced bias and out right discrimination for being Catholic or Irish, Italian, etc… Many people point to the election of JFK as a turning point, that Catholics had finally been accepted into the mainstream of American society. (For better or for worse)

It had less to do with our beautiful Catholic culture that you refer to.

 

[Spirithound]

Friend, the ghetto is yet to come. As your country and mine continue on their hell-bound trajectory, we will lose our hospitals, our schools, our television, radio, and other media, and eventually even our Church property. We will go underground. Mass will be only for those willing to risk death, priests will, by necessity, wear non-distinctive clothing, who knows if even liturgical vestments will make it through.

Dear friend, have faith, stay strong, and see you on the flip side.

 

[Bob_Aliano]

Friend, the ghetto is yet to come. As your country and mine continue on their hell-bound trajectory, we will lose our hospitals, our schools, our television, radio, and other media, and eventually even our Church property. We will go underground. Mass will be only for those willing to risk death, priests will, by necessity, wear non-distinctive clothing, who knows if even liturgical vestments will make it through.

Dear friend, have faith, stay strong, and see you on the flip side.

If we don’t fight back, I’m afraid your forecast is correct. We will soon learn who are the true Catholics.

 

[Milesius]

Well that was back in the day when we loved our fellow Catholics enough to actually want to live with them and form real parish communities.

At some point we started to care more about fitting in with the rest of society and making money. Today most families can’t even preserve their own community but instead have family members spread out all over the land and if we cannot preserve the building block of any society intact what hope is their for building a larger society? Its pretty hard to maintain a community when people are moving to new cities every few years for work etc.

WE could form such communities and such a society again, indeed it could be done quite easily in a small way and it both our Catholic duty and should be a natural consequence of our faith to do so imo.

But that requires a group of people, and it could be quite small group, who would be willing to make the sacrifices which are always necessary of any who would be pioneers.

 

[rwoehmke]

I have used that term in the past. I lived in Detroit from 1943 to summer 1945. Our neighborhood was very mixed in nationality and race, but it was very unlike some other neighborhoods. It was located near the Capuchin Monastery where Father Solanus Casey was the gate keeper. My wife lived on the other hand lived in Holy Redeemer Parish which was mostly Irish Catholic. It was right next to St. Hedwigs parish which was mostly Polish Catholic. The Irish were not welcome in St. Hedwigs parish. There was and still is a separate city called Hamtramck located within the boundaries of Detroit. It was solidly Polish. When asked where they lived most Catholics responded with the name of their parish.

The rest of my first 21 years, I lived in a small city located Northeast of Detroit. The town was mostly German Catholic, although the upper crust people were mostly other nationalities and lived along the river north of downtown. We also had one American Indian, a Black lady, but no Orientals. Catholics German, French, Irish etc. belonged to a single parish that had a school 1st grade through 8th grade. The publickers and kids of “not so good Catholics” went to the public schools across the street. We did noit mix even after school was out. Our activities were somewhat parish oriented.

In Detroit we played with all kinds of kids in my neighborhood, but we could not swim at the YMCA. As kids we did not discuss religion and to this day I am not sure who was what, but we did know we were Catholics and therefore superior and different. I sometimes think that we divided ourselves first into Catholics, than by ethnicity. Marrying someone of another faith was not to be tolerated. Marrying across ethnic or racial lines was also liable to get the couple shunned. At least in my small hometown.

When I first went to work in a factory everyone knew who was the kraut, the pole, the russian, the swede, and so on. I think we all thought that our own ethnic background was somehow superior. I married an Irish girl from the Southwest side of Detroit. I brought her home to meet my parents for the first time, which in those days was a big deal. My sister told me some years later, that after we left, my father said to her and my mother, “She seems to be a nice girl, but why on earth would he want to marry an Irishwoman?”

So in many ways in those days we did have a “ghetto” mentality and a fear of being contaminated by the outside world. Unfortunately when we left that behind, we also lost some things that it would have been better to hold onto closely.

 

[avus]

I grew up in several Irish Catholic ghettos in Philadelphia and they all were lower-middle class neighborhoods where Catholicism was predominant but certainly never to the point of making the non-Catholics feel unwelcome or like outsiders. The culture was wonderful because the Faith pervaded everything without even realizing it. From the block collections where the priests would visit the homes - with altar boys going ahead to call out “the priest is coming” to prepare the way. Or the youngsters wearing their new Easter suits and dresses all day. Or the utter hush on Good Friday from noon to 3 when no one, young or old, spoke a word. Or the total feeling of safety and security because adults looked out for each other’s children and property.

It was a time that will never return. And Americans, regardless of religion, are worse off by its passing.

 

[Bob_Aliano]

I have used that term in the past. I lived in Detroit from 1943 to summer 1945. Our neighborhood was very mixed in nationality and race, but it was very unlike some other neighborhoods. It was located near the Capuchin Monastery where Father Solanus Casey was the gate keeper. My wife lived on the other hand lived in Holy Redeemer Parish which was mostly Irish Catholic. It was right next to St. Hedwigs parish which was mostly Polish Catholic. The Irish were not welcome in St. Hedwigs parish. There was and still is a separate city called Hamtramck located within the boundaries of Detroit. It was solidly Polish. When asked where they lived most Catholics responded with the name of their parish.

The rest of my first 21 years, I lived in a small city located Northeast of Detroit. The town was mostly German Catholic, although the upper crust people were mostly other nationalities and lived along the river north of downtown. We also had one American Indian, a Black lady, but no Orientals. Catholics German, French, Irish etc. belonged to a single parish that had a school 1st grade through 8th grade. The publickers and kids of “not so good Catholics” went to the public schools across the street. We did noit mix even after school was out. Our activities were somewhat parish oriented.

In Detroit we played with all kinds of kids in my neighborhood, but we could not swim at the YMCA. As kids we did not discuss religion and to this day I am not sure who was what, but we did know we were Catholics and therefore superior and different. I sometimes think that we divided ourselves first into Catholics, than by ethnicity. Marrying someone of another faith was not to be tolerated. Marrying across ethnic or racial lines was also liable to get the couple shunned. At least in my small hometown.

When I first went to work in a factory everyone knew who was the kraut, the pole, the russian, the swede, and so on. I think we all thought that our own ethnic background was somehow superior. I married an Irish girl from the Southwest side of Detroit. I brought her home to meet my parents for the first time, which in those days was a big deal. My sister told me some years later, that after we left, my father said to her and my mother, “She seems to be a nice girl, but why on earth would he want to marry an Irishwoman?”

So in many ways in those days we did have a “ghetto” mentality and a fear of being contaminated by the outside world. Unfortunately when we left that behind, we also lost some things that it would have been better to hold onto closely.

Sounds more like Catholics behaving badly toward each other than the outside world behaving badly toward Catholics. As an Italian/Polish/American I’m also a pretty good example of a lack of concern over ethnic contamination.

 

[Milesius]

It was a time that will never return. And Americans, regardless of religion, are worse off by its passing.

If men created it once they can create it again, all it would take is enough people with the will to do so

 

[Bob_Aliano]

If men created it once they can create it again, all it would take is enough people with the will to do so

I wish! The American (generalization, sorry) of today suffers from two major personality faults that would make a return to those days difficult if not impossible; a severe me first attitude and a very thin skin, always ready to be offended.

In addition: Then it was very common for neighbors, even strangers, to step up and help someone in need, we didn’t have much in riches but we had no problem sharing what we had; most people had a genuine respect for others and it showed through common courtesies; we respected our seniors, our clergy, our police, our flag, our president, other religions; we watched each others kids and even scolded them if needed without fear of a lawsuit; there was one Catholic Mass in the universal language of Latin, we could attend any church anywhere in the world and know exactly what to do, what to expect; we could go into any church at any time of the day, they were not locked. I could go on but it’s becoming maudlin.

 

[Milesius]

I wish! The American (generalization, sorry) of today suffers from two major personality faults that would make a return to those days difficult if not impossible; a severe me first attitude and a very thin skin, always ready to be offended.

In addition: Then it was very common for neighbors, even strangers, to step up and help someone in need, we didn’t have much in riches but we had no problem sharing what we had; most people had a genuine respect for others and it showed through common courtesies; we respected our seniors, our clergy, our police, our flag, our president, other religions; we watched each others kids and even scolded them if needed without fear of a lawsuit; there was one Catholic Mass in the universal language of Latin, we could attend any church anywhere in the world and know exactly what to do, what to expect; we could go into any church at any time of the day, they were not locked. I could go on but it’s becoming maudlin.

So back then Catholics were actually catholic, and society in general had been influenced by Christian values.

All it takes then to build such a community anew is for Catholics to start living their faith again, which is not a choice but a duty we already have anyway.

And to actually be able to live in such a community yourself you wouldn’t even need all Catholics to start doing that you would only need two dozen or so families who all wanted to form a community and live in one parish in the same neighbourhood.

 

[Bob_Aliano]

So back then Catholics were actually catholic, and society in general had been influenced by Christian values.

All it takes then to build such a community anew is for Catholics to start living their faith again, which is not a choice but a duty we already have anyway.

And to actually be able to live in such a community yourself you wouldn’t even need all Catholics to start doing that you would only need two dozen or so families who all wanted to form a community and live in one parish in the same neighbourhood.

They already exist but they tend to become closed societies! My experience with a Polish parish here in the Denver area was pretty disheartening; we attended an annul picnic supposedly open to interested Catholics, we were snubbed and ignored like some invading vermin. I felt more welcomed by the Amish, Lutherans and even the non-denominational bible thumpers!

 

[Milesius]

They already exist but they tend to become closed societies! My experience with a Polish parish here in the Denver area was pretty disheartening; we attended an annul picnic supposedly open to interested Catholics, we were snubbed and ignored like some invading vermin. I felt more welcomed by the Amish, Lutherans and even the non-denominational bible thumpers!

That is because they can only exist as closed societies, if they don’t keep a degree of separation then they are quickly assimilated into the larger society and then cease to exist, that is exactly what happened to the communities of the past, they allowed in outside influences which completely changed those communities to the point where they completely lost their identities and broke apart to be absorbed by the larger community around them.

 

[mlldrl]

In the United States the Catholic ghetto ended after WWII. Before WWII Catholics were among the lowest in terms of education and wealth, now we’re among the highest. The GI Bill changed everything. Children of immigrants came back from the war and went to college, something never dreamed of before. With education came better jobs and a desire to move to the suburbs. The result is that you were more likely to live next to Protestants than Catholics like in the old neighborhood and with the distances involved with suburban life the parish was no longer the hub of neighborhood life. Over a few generations homes became less Catholic in appearance and practice as children who didn’t grow up with an infused Catholicism started their own families and the trend continues. No, we were on this path long before Vatican II.

There’s a researcher from Purdue, can’t recall his name, who has written about this.

M

 

[Bob_Aliano]

That is because they can only exist as closed societies, if they don’t keep a degree of separation then they are quickly assimilated into the larger society and then cease to exist, that is exactly what happened to the communities of the past, they allowed in outside influences which completely changed those communities to the point where they completely lost their identities and broke apart to be absorbed by the larger community around them.

Nonsense. The faith of the community and their belief in their cause will keep them together. If they are so weak that any outside influence causes them to perish they never had the faith at all, they were a passing fad. Just look at the Amish, Eastern Orthodox or Orthodox Jewish for examples of persistence under the onslaught of outside influences. What you are describing is very much what I see happening to Catholicism with the fragmentation generated by the distortions and misapplication of VII. Sadly in response, some communities the TLM folks are closing ranks against outsiders and becoming cult-like when they should be openly attracting new members.

 

[Milesius]

Nonsense. The faith of the community and their belief in their cause will keep them together. If they are so weak that any outside influence causes them to perish they never had the faith at all, they were a passing fad. Just look at the Amish, Eastern Orthodox or Orthodox Jewish for examples of persistence under the onslaught of outside influences. What you are describing is very much what I see happening to Catholicism with the fragmentation generated by the distortions and misapplication of VII. Sadly in response, some communities the TLM folks are closing ranks against outsiders and becoming cult-like when they should be openly attracting new members.

The Amish, Eastern Orthodox or Orthodox Jewish would not be recognisable as such if they did not maintain a degree of separation, they are able to persist under the onslaught because they kept their guard up and kept outside influences outside through the enforcement of strict laws governing how the community interacts with the outside such as the Amish laws which do not permit electricity or telephones in their homes. By restricting access to television, radio, and telephones, the Amish are better able to keep the modern world from intruding into their home life. Not to mention the law forbidding them to marry anyone who is not Amish.

You might find this interesting:

holycrosslivonia.org/amish/q_and_a_no2.htm