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ROAMIN' CATHOLIC
Contents © 1999
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
LETTERS
NOVEMBER 1999
CLARIFICATION
A sentence in the article "Freelance Bishops" which appeared in the October issue of the Mission is misleading. I am writing this by way of clarification. The sentence referred to Bishop E. Paul Raible and it reads, " All of the priests of Good Shepherd (except Raible) are former Roman Catholics."
Readers can easily infer from this statement that Bishop Raible is not a Roman Catholic. He presented his baptismal record to the faculty and was accepted as a student at Chaminade Prep in Marcy, New York and at St. Meinrad's Abbey in Indiana and at St. John Vianney Seminary in Steubenville, Ohio. He did not go on to ordination in the Roman Catholic Church, however. He was well grounded in philosophy, theology and scripture at these institutions.
George Lesinski,
Good Shepherd American Catholic Church
Lakewood
WHAT A GREAT HISTORY!
The closure of St. Isidore Church in Los Alamitos by the diocese of Orange has been a major news story since early September, in the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register. The Times' last report, October 9, 1999, said that in a meeting on October 8, 1999, Bishop Tod Brown offered the St. Isidore's parishioners psychological counseling to help them with their transition to St. Hedwig's [see News, this issue].
Unless the Los Alamitos Mexican-American community embrace the bleak sterility of the new age St. Hedwig's, how will they bury their dead or baptize their children? Their new spiritual home does not honor Our Lady of Guadalupe, or other saints. It is designed like a commercial auditorium, an ecumenical "tract church" reflecting the architecture favored by the modern churchmen for their new liturgy, a style that tries not to look "too Catholic."
St. Isidore's has actually been a non-church for many years, as is revealed in its listings over time in the Orange diocesan directory. It shows that St. Hedwig has appropriated the entire history of St. Isidore's since 1921. St. Hedwig's did not come into being until 1961. It was later earthquake-proofed to its present state.
The official "centennial history" of the archdiocese of Los Angeles, 1840 to 1940, lists St. Isidore as a "mission church," with its own full-time pastor. Many of the other mission churches of that era evolved into regular parish churches -- but that was not to be in Rancho Los Alamitos.
Your story by Maria Elena Kennedy ["Evicted," October Mission] revealed a vibrant Catholic community. St. Isidore's church is an anachronism, however; its architecture obsolete and nonconforming, an insignificant branch office in the Ango-American church. But what a great history! Its founders included the courageous Cristeros who fled death and persecution in Mexico, and the sugar beet workers on the Bixby Ranch in the early years of this century. They built and maintained the church for 78 years, long before there was a Rossmore, or diocese of Orange.
The parishioners should be encouraged to write down their family stories, to do a book, so that all the work and trials of the pioneers, lay and religous, and their descendents today will be honored and remembered. Thus, no matter what happens to St. Isidore's, its profound spirituality and human pathos will live on for hundreds of years to inspire future Catholics.
As an ordinary layman, and a native Californian, I hope that, with God's grace, St. Isidore's may open again in some future era, and that Holy Mother Mary will salve the hurt and wipe away the tears of today's unbearable, incredible loss.
Patrick F. Flynn
Yorba Linda