Boston, MA
‘People Get Ready’: Boston-area parish offers lessons for wider church
What a blessing it would be if every parish had a sympathetic and penetrating chronicler like Susan Bigelow Reynolds, whose book People Get Ready: Ritual, Solidarity, and Lived Ecclesiology in Catholic Roxbury examines St. Mary of the Angels Parish in that Boston neighborhood.
Reynolds, who teaches theology at Emory University in Atlanta, would probably counter that observation with a different one: What a blessing it would be if every parish had the sense of shared community and commitment, of solidarity, as the people who belong to this small church in Roxbury’s Egleston Square. Perhaps, better to say, that the church belongs to them rather than that they belong to it.
Like many Boston churches, St. Mary’s was built, actually half-built, along the transit lines connecting Roxbury with downtown, but it was a small, territorial parish, with two ethnic parishes, one German and one Polish, nearby. Soon, Jewish immigrants came to the neighborhood. St. Mary’s parishioners worshiped first in the railway car barn, and in 1908 moved to the basement of the church. The funds and the families to build the church above never materialized, and when Reynolds arrived in 2011, while studying at Boston College, the congregation still worshiped in the basement church.
The lens Reynolds applies is ethnographic and, as she explains the history of the church, the choice of lens seems obvious. “St. Mary of the Angels is a parish on and of the margins,” Reynolds writes. “For more than a century, its small boundaries have encompassed some of Boston’s most consequential religious and racial borderlines.”
She goes on to note that, “In an otherwise highly segregated city and church, St. Mary’s had become a hybrid parish formed over time by successive migrations.” Some migrated from other countries, others migrated from parishes across town that had become unwelcoming. A few migrated from other denominations: Before World War II, many Black people settled in Roxbury as two Black Protestant churches opened in 1926 and 1939. The 1960s saw an influx of migrants from the Caribbean. By 1986, the pastor reported to the archdiocese that the parish served “five hundred to six hundred people representing forty-three different countries of origin.”
The fact that migration played a part in bringing so many parishioners to the basement church made it an ideal candidate to embrace and live out the image of the church as the pilgrim people of God, articulated at Vatican II. Reynolds further argues that “recovering the ecclesiological significance of difference requires centering reflection precisely at the site of difference — both the sources of rupture and the moments of embrace.”
Reynolds chronicles the unsuccessful effort to revitalize “inner-city” ministry and evangelization launched by Boston’s legendary Cardinal Richard Cushing, a great champion of the Civil Rights Movement, in the 1960s. The top-down effort came to naught, and Reynolds contrasts that want of success with the seemingly less ambitious, but ultimately more fruitful, establishment of a parish council in 1969. “Seizing the postconciliar ethos of openness and collaboration, laity leaned hard into their newfound power in order to place their struggling parish into a relationship of costly solidarity with the increasingly marginalized community it served,” Reynolds observes.
Two early parish council initiatives caused worry within the archdiocesan chancery but ultimately received Cushing’s approbation: the transfer of parish funds to a local, community bank, and gaining a dispensation to hold vigil Masses on Saturday so that the working people in the parish could enjoy their one day of rest with their families. These early exercises in lay leadership would continue and blossom, culminating in the successful effort to resist closing the parish in 2004.
‘The dynamics that have shaped St. Mary’s for a century are today transforming the entire landscape of U.S. Catholicism.’
—Susan Bigelow Reynolds
Reynolds’ chapter on the neighborhood Way of the Cross displays her passion for the particularities of the story she is telling, as well as her capacity for analysis and fine prose. “Taking a different route every year, the procession invariably crosses neighborhood boundaries, gang territories, and parish lines as it weaves together the stations into a single path, as though embroidering a new map on top of an existing one,” she writes.
The ritual, which stops at the sites of recent tragedies in the community, also does more than fashion a new divinely touched map over Roxbury’s sufferings. “Resisting interpretations of ritual as a form of narrow meaning-making or as the bearer of a singular, all-encompassing ecclesial culture, I contend instead that the Roxbury Way of the Cross can be understood as a form of practical action that affirms solidarity in difference.” Anecdotes demonstrate how the various individuals within the parish negotiate their differences while respecting them.
Later chapters discuss other ways ritual “affirms solidarity in difference.” The parish council meetings are understood as rituals in themselves, starting with the reading of the parish mission statement in both English and Spanish. So, too, is the jumbled seating on Palm Sunday when no one ends up in their usual pew. The welcome extended during the parish announcements is another: “We want to begin by welcoming those who are here for the first time, or those who have been away for a while and returned,” which Reynolds notes is the first time she has heard a welcome extended to fallen away Catholics, despite all the fretting about their departure! The regular efforts to arrange transportation for elderly parishioners, the potluck meals, the to-and-fro in the parish house, all attest to a vibrancy most parishes would envy.
It is impossible not to recognize how remarkable a parish St. Mary of the Angels is. It is also hard not to see how this parish, unlike most, successfully fought off the 2004 attempt to close it as part of the diocese-wide restructuring, arguing that the little church was an indispensable part of the neighborhood. If there is a better illustration of the changed self-understanding of the church implicit in Gaudium et spes, the Vatican II document on the church in the modern world, I do not know it.
Reynolds sees in St. Mary of the Angels not only an exceptional parish but a paradigmatic one.
“The dynamics that have shaped St. Mary’s for a century are today transforming the entire landscape of U.S. Catholicism,” she writes. “Among these are new and expanded contexts of migration, sweeping regional shifts in parish growth and decline, an ever-increasing need for lay leadership, limited resources, deep institutional mistrust and betrayal propelled by the clergy sex abuse crisis, and mounting calls for racial and economic justice.”
But there is one regard in which the Roxbury parish is exceptional that will limit the degree to which it can be paradigmatic. For a variety of reasons and in a variety of ways, St. Mary of the Angels is an intentional community. Yet, it is the genius of Catholicism to make a home for the B+ Catholics, and the C+ Catholics too, for the slackers, for those whose sense of community lies elsewhere but who still wish to find some communion with God and find it at Mass. A parish like St. Mary’s is likely too much for them. Every major city has a few parishes like St. Mary’s, refined in the fire of tribulations and overflowing with a life-giving spirit. They stand as a critique of the less-committed expressions of the faith. But they are exceptional.
In each chapter, interviews with parishioners bring the story alive and Reynolds weaves the whole into a narrative that is both readable and serviceable. After all, she is a theologian, not an historian, and this story has a purpose.
Solidarity is, for Reynolds, the great untapped ecclesiological principle of Vatican II. Yes, yes, solidarity has shaped our social ethics, and even our Christian anthropology. But, in her first chapter, she argues that the post-conciliar emphasis on communion ecclesiology undervalues the significance of difference.
“I argue that Vatican II laid the groundwork for an understanding of the parish as a school of solidarity,” Reynolds writes. “Yet as magisterial attention shifted to emphasize communion ecclesiology as the predominant interpretation of Vatican II’s ecclesiology, the ecclesiological implications of the council’s vision of solidarity have gone largely overlooked.”
She criticizes communion ecclesiology specifically for “ignoring the stark asymmetries of power that definitively shape the liturgical, sacramental and social life of a parish.” The “communion paradigm ultimately underwrites ecclesial colorblindness and renders unclear the mission of the local church with respect to racial justice.”
If so, and Reynolds makes a good case, this is a serious flaw in communion ecclesiology, and one it must address. I am not sure it is a fatal flaw, nor that the ethnographic perspective she employs does not also leave out integral aspects of a viable ecclesiology.
But here is the thing. This is a thoughtful, insightful book. It is not given to exaggeration, nor to a facile adoption of a “prophetic stance” that corresponds little with the stances taken by prophets in Scripture and more to the academic fads of the day. I could quibble with this observation or that, but none of the quibbles rise to an indictment.
I venture the hope that this book will also become seminal, that is, it will start a dialogue and debate between those theologians who, like Reynolds, employ ethnographic analysis and those theologians who cling to the communion ecclesiology that has so shaped the post-conciliar magisterium. Certainly, as Reynolds argues, the idea of an ecclesiology of solidarity could yield important correctives for a U.S. church that has difficulty resisting the cultural forces of the ambient culture, especially its comprehensive libertarianism from the boardroom to the bedroom.
American Catholic theology is in a state of crisis, and we need more theologians like Reynolds who engage the arguments of those with whom they disagree, do so respectfully, and put forward their own arguments with clarity and charity both. This is an excellent book and it should be read by a wide audience.
SMALL ACTS, BIG IMPACTS: A DAY OF SERVICE From Saturday to Monday, give back to the community with the Discovery Museum’s “Day of Service” in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day’s designation as a National Day of Service. Donate or collect supplies for the Welcome Basket drive, and make a warm welcome card in support of the Refugee and Immigrant Assistance Center. Donations for these care packages — including cleaning and laundry supplies, hygiene products, infant care items, and winter clothing — will go to immigrant or refugee families in need of essential daily items. Free admission. Jan. 18-20, 10 a.m.-2 p.m., 177 Main St., Acton. discoveryacton.org
MLK DAY CONCERT — VOTING WITH PURPOSE AND WITHOUT FEAR On Sunday, the Association of Black Citizens of Lexington is hosting a concert in honor of MLK Jr. Day and in celebration of the lives of Martin Luther King Jr. and activist Fannie Lou Hamer. Both civil rights leaders were integral in the fight for equal voting rights and access to ballots for all voters. Enjoy songs of spirituality and freedom — performed by Brother Dennis and Friends — as an homage to the songs that motivated those at the Meredith March Against Fear in 1966 and many other civil rights activists of the 1960s. Tickets are $25. Jan. 19, 2 p.m.-3:30 p.m. Follen Church, 755 Mass. Ave., Lexington. eventbrite.com
EMBRACE HONORS MLK On Sunday, Embrace Boston hosts Embrace Honors MLK 2025, a formal evening of joy, music, and community. Leaders to be honored include former Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker and first lady Lauren Baker, and former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and first lady Diane Patrick. Hosts include Melisa Valdez, in-arena host for the Boston Celtics, and Latoyia Edwards, Emmy-winning anchor from NBC 10 Boston. DJ Envy, DJ Papadon, and the Berklee All Star Jazz Band are among the entertainers booked. Tickets are $450. Jan. 19. 6:30 p.m.-midnight. Big Night Live, 110 Causeway St. embraceboston.org
PEABODY ESSEX MUSEUM DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. CELEBRATION The Peabody Essex Museum will honor the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday with a variety of art installations. View the works of Bethany Collins (”America: A Hymnal”), David Boxer (”The Black Books”), and Alison Saar’s (”Weight)”. Starting at 11 a.m., join fluid acrylics artist Rahim Gray to learn the way he incorporates social justice and music in his work and to make pour art of your own. Free admission. Jan. 20, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. 161 Essex St., Salem. pem.org
ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER MUSEUM — MLK JR. DAY OF SERVICE Visit the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Monday to stroll its galleries, hear storytellers, and participate in activities. Featured exhibits include performance artist Dzidzor’s soundscape “Riot: A Sermon of Anger, Dreams, and Love,” Crystal Bi’s “Dream Portal” hands-on installation, and a performance by Amanda Shea and musician Wylsner Bastien of “Why We Still Dream” at Calderwood Hall. Free admission. Jan. 20, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 25 Evans Way. gardnermuseum.org
CELEBRATE! WITH GEORGE RUSSELL JR. AND FRIENDS The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum hosts a Monday performance of some of Martin Luther King Jr.’s favorite songs by George Russell Jr. and Friends. The event is free to the public per the support of the Martin Richard Foundation and the Mass Cultural Council. Jan. 20, 10:30.-11:30 a.m. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Columbia Point. eventbrite.com
MFA BOSTON OPEN HOUSE, MLK DAY In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. and the communal and artistic spirit of the holiday, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston will offer free admission Monday to any visitors with a Massachusetts ZIP code. Within the museum, view ArtSpark’s “Radical Heroes” program and make your own window-hanging at the “Stained Glass: Doves” station. The museum offers several other performances and talks; see the website for the schedule. Jan. 20. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave. mfa.org
BOSTON CHILDREN’S CHORUS — ROAD TO FREEDOM This year’s Boston Children’s Chorus MLK Day program educates about Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, two civil rights leaders who are often perceived as ideologically unaligned, though the interconnectedness between the two is more complex. The “Road to Freedom” program at Symphony Hall on Monday is designed to educate the Boston community on the similarities between the two activists, and the vital role both hold in shaping social movements of the past and present. $15-$75. Jan. 20, 4 p.m. Symphony Hall, 301 Mass. Ave. bso.org
ANNUAL MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. CELEBRATION Join the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras and the Boston community for a celebratory program of memorable performances on Monday. The two-hour program, presented in conjunction with the Museum of African American History, will include spiritual and cultural performances, spoken word and readings, and guest speakers. Free admission. Jan. 20. Starts at 1 p.m. Strand Theatre, 543 Columbia Road. eventbrite.com
Haley Clough can be reached at haley.clough@globe.com. Follow her on Instagram @hcloughjournalism.
A pair of division foes in the Eastern Conference meet up on Wednesday, Jan. 15 when the Boston Celtics travel to take on the Toronto Raptors at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto.
The game is scheduled to start at 7:30 p.m. EST and will be broadcast on NBC Sports Boston. Fans looking to watch this NBA game can do so for free by using DirecTV Stream, which offers a free trial. You can also watch on FuboTV, which also offers a free trial and $30 off your first month, or SlingTV, which doesn’t offer a free trial but has promotional offers available.
The Celtics are looking for their first winning streak since they beat the Raptors, Timberwolves and Rockets consecutively to end December and start January. Boston enters this matchup at 28-11 while Toronto is 9-31 and winless in two previous matchups with the defending champions.
- WATCH THE GAME FOR FREE HERE
Who: Boston Celtics vs. Toronto Raptors
When: Wednesday, Jan. 15 at 7:30 p.m. EST
Where: Scotiabank Arena in Toronto
Stream: FuboTV; Sling; DirecTV Stream (free trial)
Betting: Check out our MA sports betting guide, where you can learn basic terminology, definitions and how to read odds for those interested in learning how to bet in Massachusetts.
What is FuboTV?
FuboTV is an internet television service that offers more than 200 channels across sports and entertainment including Paramount+ with SHOWTIME. From the UEFA Champions League to the WNBA to international tournaments ranging across sports, there’s plenty of options available on FuboTV, which offers a free trial and $30 off the first month for new customers.
What is DirecTV Stream?
DirecTV Stream offers practically everything DirecTV provides, except for a remote and a streaming device to connect to your television. Sign up now and get three free months of premium channels including MAX, Paramount+ with SHOWTIME and Starz.
What is SlingTV?
SlingTV offers a variety of live programing ranging from news and sports and starting as low as $20 a month for your first month. Subscribers also get a month of DVR Plus free if they sign up now. Choose from a variety of sports packages without long-term contracts and with easy cancelation.
RELATED CONTENT:
Court papers say ex-NBA player Jontay Porter laid out betting scheme in a text; 6th person arrested
By JENNIFER PELTZ Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — A sixth person was charged Monday in the federal sports betting case involving ex-NBA player Jontay Porter, and authorities disclosed a text message Porter allegedly sent explaining how to cash in on his plans to bench himself in a January 2024 game.
The former Toronto Raptors center already has pleaded guilty in the criminal case and was banned from the NBA for life. He admitted that he agreed to withdraw early from games, claiming illness or injury, so that those in the know could win big by betting on him to underperform expectations.
Although the new developments don’t affect the legal case against Porter, they put the scheme in what a court document says were his own words.
“Hit unders for the big numbers,” Porter wrote to an alleged conspirator on Jan. 26, 2024, according to a court complaint against yet another alleged schemer, Shane Hennen. He was arrested Sunday at the Las Vegas airport while boarding a flight to Panama.
“No blocks no steals. I’m going to play first 2-3 minute stint off the bench then when I get subbed out tell them my eye killing me again,” Porter wrote, according to the complaint. It identifies him only as “NBA Player 1” but makes clear through references — such as the details of his guilty plea last year — that it’s Porter.
He had scratched an eye during a game on Jan. 22, 2024, keeping conspirators in the loop by text even from the arena, according to the complaint. But he wasn’t on the injured list when the Raptors faced the LA Clippers four days later.
Porter ultimately played about 4 1/2 minutes in that game before saying he had aggravated the eye problem. Then he pulled out of a March 20 game against the Sacramento Kings after less than three minutes, saying he felt ill. His performance in both games fell well below what sportsbooks had anticipated.
Porter told a court in July that he got involved in the plot to try to clear his own gambling debts. He’s set to be sentenced in May. He could face anything from no jail time to 20 years behind bars; prosecutors have estimated his sentence at about 3 1/2 to four years in prison.
A message was sent to his lawyer Monday to seek comment on the developments.
Hennen was released without bail after his arraignment Monday in Las Vegas on charges including wire fraud conspiracy. The court complaint alleges that he placed bets through proxies after co-conspirators alerted him to Porter’s plans for the Jan. 26 game, and that he also got a heads-up about the March 20 game and likely told other gamblers about it.
A message seeking comment was sent to his attorney.
Besides Hennen and Porter, four other people also have been charged to date. Two have pleaded guilty, a third has pleaded not guilty, and the fourth hasn’t entered a plea.
The complaint against Hennen alleges there were still more conspirators involved. It’s unclear whether more people may yet be arrested.
The Associated Press contributed to this article
Boston, MA
Constantine Manos, photographer for landmark ‘Where’s Boston?’ exhibit, dies at 90 – The Boston Globe
Among Mr. Manos’s books were “A Greek Portfolio” (1972; updated 1999), “Bostonians” (1975), “American Color” 1995) and ”American Color 2″ (2010). Mr. Manos’s work with color was notably expressive and influential.
“Color was a four-letter word in art photography,” the photographer Lou Jones, who worked with Mr. Manos on “Where’s Boston?,” said in a telephone interview. “But he was making wonderful, complex photographs with color, and that meant so much.”
Yet for all his formal skill, Mr. Manos always emphasized the human element in his work. “I am a people photographer and have always been interested in people,” he once said.
That interest extended beyond the photographs he took. He was a celebrated teacher. Among the students he taught in his photo workshops was Stella Johnson.
“He’d go through a hundred of my photographs,” she said in a telephone interview, “and maybe he’d like two. ‘No, no, no, no, yes, no.’ Costa really taught me how to see. I remember him looking at one picture and saying, “You were standing in the wrong spot.’ Something like that was invaluable to me as a young photographer.
“He was a very, very kind man, very generous. But he was very strict. ‘How could you do that?’ He was adored by his students and by his friends, absolutely. We were all lucky to have been in his orbit.”
Mr. Manos, who moved to Provincetown in 2008, lived in the South End for four decades. The South Carolina native’s association with the Boston area began when the Boston Symphony Orchestra hired him as a photographer at Tanglewood. He was 19. This led to Mr. Manos’s first book, “Portrait of a Symphony” (1961; updated 2000).
Constantine Manos was born in Columbia, S.C., on Oct. 12, 1934. His parents, Dimitri and Aphrodite (Vaporiotou) Manos, were Greek immigrants. They ran a café in the city’s Black section. That experience gave Mr. Manos a sympathy for marginalized people that would stay with him throughout his life. As a student at the University of South Carolina, he wrote editorials in the school paper opposing segregation. Later, he would do extensive work chronicling the LGBTQ+ community with his camera.
Mr. Manos became interested in photography at 13, joining the school camera club and building a darkroom in his parents’ basement. After graduating from college, Mr. Manos did two years of Army service in Germany, working as a photographer for Stars and Stripes. He joined Magnum in 1963. This had special meaning for him. Mr. Manos’s chief inspiration as a young photographer had been Henri Cartier-Bresson, one of Magnum’s founders. He was such an admirer he made a point of using the same equipment that Cartier-Bresson did.
That same year, Mr. Manos entered a seafood restaurant in Rome that was around the corner from the Pantheon. Prodanou, his future husband, was dining with friends. Noticing Mr. Manos, he gestured to him. “Would you join us for coffee?” The couple spent the next 61 years together, marrying in 2011.
Mr. Manos lived in Greece for three years, which led to “A Greek Portfolio.” He undertook a very different project in the Athens of America. Part of the city’s Bicentennial tribute, “Where’s Boston?” was a slice-of-many-lives view of contemporary Boston.
Located in a red-white-and-blue striped pavilion at the Prudential Center, it became a local sensation. The installation involved 42 computerized projectors and 3,097 color slides (most of them taken by Mr. Manos), shown on eight 10 feet by 10 feet screens. Outside the pavilion was a set of murals, consisting of 152 black-and-white photographs of Boston scenes, all shot by Mr. Manos.
“The most important thing I had to do was to keep my picture ideas simple,” he said in a 1975 Globe interview. “Viewers are treated to a veritable avalanche of color slides in exactly one hour’s time.”
In that same interview, he made an observation about his work generally. “I prefer to stay in close to my subjects. I let them see me and my camera and when they become bored they forget about me and then I get my best pictures.”
Among institutions that own Mr. Manos’s photographs are the Museum of Fine Arts; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Library of Congress; and the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
In addition to his husband, Mr. Manos leaves a sister, Irene Constantinides, of Atlanta, and a brother, Theofanis Manos, of Greenville, S.C.
A memorial service will be held later this year.
Mark Feeney can be reached at mark.feeney@globe.com.
Violent crime in Dallas is way down. So why do so many feel unsafe?
Hitting their stride – Miami Grand Prix going from strength to strength after hat-trick year
Nine ways to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day around Boston – The Boston Globe
Denver faces Miami, seeks 5th straight road win
Seattle pet sitter, family of slain dog walker advocate for neighborhood security
Colorado Rockies game no. 116 thread: Zac Gallen vs José Ureña
Why Marjorie Taylor Greene was ‘kicked out’ of the Freedom Caucus according to Rep. Buck
See it: Tesla crashes into Columbus convention center at 70 mph
Fox News Politics: Georgia the whole day through
Death of missing Oregon girl found in stream ruled homicide
It Could Take Weeks Before Displaced L.A. Residents Can Go Home
'Lying to the nation': Trump orbit slams Biden for taking credit for ceasefire deal
Biden takes aim at oligarchs and extreme wealth in farewell address
Biden touts major wins in farewell address
Takeaways From Marco Rubio’s Senate Hearing
-
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25822586/STK169_ZUCKERBERG_MAGA_STKS491_CVIRGINIA_A.jpg "Meta is highlighting a splintering global approach to online speech")
Technology7 days agoMeta is highlighting a splintering global approach to online speech
-
Science5 days agoMetro will offer free rides in L.A. through Sunday due to fires
-
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25821992/videoframe_720397.png "Las Vegas police release ChatGPT logs from the suspect in the Cybertruck explosion")
Technology1 week agoLas Vegas police release ChatGPT logs from the suspect in the Cybertruck explosion
-
Movie Reviews1 week ago‘How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies’ Review: Thai Oscar Entry Is a Disarmingly Sentimental Tear-Jerker
-
Health1 week agoMichael J. Fox honored with Presidential Medal of Freedom for Parkinson’s research efforts
-
Movie Reviews1 week agoMovie Review: Millennials try to buy-in or opt-out of the “American Meltdown”
-
News1 week agoPhotos: Pacific Palisades Wildfire Engulfs Homes in an L.A. Neighborhood
-
World1 week agoTrial Starts for Nicolas Sarkozy in Libya Election Case