Google Earth Pictorial: St. Joseph Parish
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As I leave more and more family and friends behind on my journey across the United States, I am encountering more and more places where I have never been. The brown, depressed, whispers of long grass shoots hold together the red soil that dominates the Oklahoma landscape. It is not hard to imagine the flow of buffalo across this land before the trickle of settlers reformed this still beautiful land into vast farms and ranches. The radio stations to choose from are different shades of Country I never knew existed. This is the “heartland.”  

It is very different than the Northeast, where Churches are often a short walk away from each other. Distance is measured in time here, and a short drive may take an hour or two. At the same time, I’m still in the United States, I’m still “home.”  

My stop off today is in Norman, Oklahoma. I am friends with a Youth Minister here whom I have known since this previous summer. We are very similar in our passions and we tend to focus on the practical issues of youth ministry. But we are very different at the same time. It has never threatened us. Because of our faith, we know we are family.  

Norman is a great place to visit to experience the Roman Catholic Church in America. Roman Catholics make up 3% of the population in Oklahoma. The state is mostly populated by Christians of other denominations. Norman hosts the University of Oklahoma, and is a much bigger city than most of the towns on the Oklahoma landscape.  Norman is a little unusual for an Oklahoma town in that it holds three Catholic Churches, St. Mark’s, St. Joseph’s, and St. Thomas Moore. But as I have traveled 2/3rds of the United States, I can’t think of a better example of a town that exemplifies the diversity of communities in the Catholic family that the United States has to offer. If you have downloaded Google Earth, you can view my pictorials of these parishes by clicking here. This will zoom into St. Joseph’s parish where I again had the honor of witnessing a funeral of a much loved parishioner as her body entered the church for one last time. The other parishes can be viewed by clicking on the folders on the left of your screen under the Places tab.  

St. Joseph’s is what you would expect of a Church built by European immigrants who had to adapt to life on the frontier of American. The steeple resembles the popular style associated with Churches of many denominations in America. The interior is an uplifting white. It was a Church built to adapt to the American experience, built by pilgrims of limited means. 

St. Mark’s is a well designed modern community with large gathering spaces, a parish library, offices, and a worship space bringing the community together around the altar. Those who know me know that I prefer this kind of church, but I must also admit that on the surface, it is hard to distinguish from a conference center. 

St. Thomas Moore is a parish that serves the college students of the University of Oklahoma. My friends point out that it was designed by a Buddhist monk. It employs the medieval monastic tradition of a church in which the assembly faces each other. This tradition originated in the monastic life because the Liturgy of the Hours, the main form of prayer in the monastic tradition, involves recitation of tropes from the Psalms by alternating groups. The parish stands in stark contrast to the other parishes.  But they’re all Catholic.

My hosts admit that they feel something is missing at the other churches. They prefer the one in which they go (which takes them a half an hour drive to reach). They can understand the concept behind the church, but it doesn’t feel right to them.  I asked them. “What purpose do you think this serves? I can accept vast difference if I know that is serving the culture and speaking to that culture.” In the back of my head, I’m thinking of how, even St. Joseph’s parish in Norman is a church adapted to the culture of a frontier American church. “Well,” one replies, “I guess it serves the college community, and that is a time in people’s lives when they need to see things from a different angle, a different perspective. Even while this space accomplishes a different look on things, it still brings people around the Eucharist and gives praise to God.” 

She was right. This church works because it gathers Catholics of an interesting subculture – that of a secular college university – and speaks with them about the Faith. I never really had that sort of appreciation before. With all due respect to the many Protestants who read these blogs and the many gifts Protestant’s have given the Roman Church through challenges that have led to important reforms, I found myself saying. “This is one of the things that makes us Catholic. We can sustain these differences and still be family. If these churches were part of many Protestant conventions, they would break off and end up as entirely different denominations.”   

I have to admit that I am surprised today. I knew for a long time what I would discover on this trip… a never-ending theme of unity in diversity. Family in variance. A mystery. What I did not expect to find was a town in the middle of Oklahoma which embodied that reality of the American experience of Roman Catholicism.