Customer Reviews

Excellent Catholic Parishes: The Guide to Best Places and Practices

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Mr. Wilkes offers an inspiring overview of "excellent" Catholic parishes, but the nuts and bolts of running an "excellent" parish are ignored. This is not a "how-to" book as much as a presentation of church communities too good to be true.

In fact, I have been to three of these "excellent" parishes and can assure you that they are simply hyped parishes who at one time or another had a charismatic pastor. They are the flavor of the month, and in a few years will look as faddishly ridiculous as afros or SUVs.

St. Mary Magdalen in Florida, where I grew up, is now a parish ruled by a "lay-ocracy" of parishioners, typically wealthy, who push through their own programs at the expense of less influential members. They recently raised money to renovate their 25 year old chuch, but wealthy members convinced a weak pastor to spend the money on a gymnasium instead. A product of central Florida's explosive growth, they will be saddled with brick-and-mortar monuments in years to come.

Old St. Pat's in Chicago prides itself on a celebration of diversity and ecumenism. One Holy Week, the pastor and his parishioner confidantes decided to cancel the Holy Thursday liturgy in favor of a Seder--limited seating (100 people) at $20 a head. Most parishioners were excluded from a celebration of one of Catholicism's most solemn liturgies. Fortunately, Cardinal Bernardin had a proper liturgy in the cathedral not far from good old Pat's.

Santa Monica in California is a touchy, feel-good church with a dynamic pastor, lots of wealthy parishioners (then-Mayor Riordan donated $1 million to repair a bell tower damaged in an earthquake), and enough film stars in attendance to rival Spago's. In the country's largest diocese, it offers good liturgies and an involved community that is unrivaled by other Los Angeles parishes; the diocese has no commitment to liturgy, so anything rising a few inches above the ruck is bound to be considered "excellent."

Mr. Wilke would do better to look at the true nature of his parishes, which may not have been possible in his short stays. The diamond may shine on first look, but closer examination shows a dirty black core.

That Wilkes includes both an entry for Chicago's Old St. Pat's, a veritable showcase of bizarre, 70's-style liturgical abuses, and a reflection on liturgical dance, an innovation absolutely prohibited from celebrations of the Western/Latin rite (see "Notitiae" 11 [1975] 202-205, Congregation for the Sacraments and Divine Worship), should give you some indication of the ideological thread that runs through this book. The parishes highlighted here are precisely the sort of horizontally-focused places that prompted Pope Benedict's pending and much-needed "reform of the reform."

This is a helpful and thought provoking book for those seeking to improve their Parishes to become more vibrant examples of Christ's love. The challenge our Church faces is to adapt to the coming Church (increased lay leadership with a great emphasis on welcome and acceptance) while retaining the traditional strengths of our faith tradition. This book provides examples of specific approaches that have been tried without claiming there is one right way or recommending a specific regimented program. I highly recommend it for anyone wrestling with how to improve their parish.

What is your parish like? What would you like it to be? What is it that transforms parishes? How do we keep our schools open? And, there are many similar questions that most of us have. How would you like the following to be the description of your parish? "This parish provides a free elementary school education for all its children, and when those children graduate, the parish pays the tuition at the regional Catholic high school. Weekly attendance at the Sunday liturgies hovers at 85 percent, and no one budges until the servers extinguish the last candle. Over three hundred people attend weekday Mass--not including the school children. This parish has no second collections or bingo, yet its income not only takes care of the parish's needs, but also helps other Catholic churches in the area. It supports a free medical clinic for the working poor, providing everything from heart valve replacements to amoxicillin for a baby's infected ear. It's a parish where perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament has been observed for over a decade."

The above quote is the first paragraph you will read in this book about Saint Francis of Assisi Parish in Wichita, KS. It sounds ideal! That's because it is. It wasn't always that way. As the author describes, "The story of this parish, like some of the others discussed in this book, started on a less than encouraging note. Father Thomas McGread was assigned to St. Francis.... [It already] had seen three pastors come and three pastors go in less than two years. It was considered a priest's graveyard. Father McGread was told that if he could not or did not want to continue after a six-month trial period, he would be reassigned with no questions asked."

He didn't go! He wasn't reassigned! He did what most would seem impossible. What did this priest do differently? You'll have to read the chapter on this parish. As the author states, "this parish provides a stunning example of what happens when a young priest with a vision at once simple and profound, modern and biblical takes seriously what had always been considered a Protestant concept. In the process, he transformed not only a parish, which great priests can certainly do, but also the entire diocese in which he serves."

This book is inspirational in this regard. It has the ability to generate ideas and produce great ideas. Take some that suit you! Ignore others! Simulate! Design what will work for you! It is not a verbatim or perfect guide! You will have to bring some imagination and creativity with you to apply what is presented to individual settings. Also, discretion is always an individual responsibility, given examples of what has or can be done. The book doesn't show all the hard work necessary to accomplish such a goal. It can, however, act as a stepping stone to looking further at possibilities, gathering insights, and digging deeper into principles and practices that have worked and can be implemented in other parish environments. It can lead to discovering unknown resources that may be lying dormant and untapped, or resources that are readily available, like "Stewardship," but have not been tried or risks that have not been taken. It can open the door to the greatest resources--parishioners--sharing in parish life, transforming it with their time and talent. The priests can't do it. There's only one or two of them in a parish. It takes the people, and from the many success stories, they can do it with the prayers of a parish community, the right kind of leadership and solid, clear vision. The above parish is only one example. There are others. Of these you must pick and choose. However, a personal visit to Saint Francis of Assisi Parish proved to show amazing results took place there. The book is worth it if this is one example is the only one you find useful, and that is: because you can profit from it!

This is a tool in the hands of a Parish Council, other teams, or individual parishioners to read and use in conjunction with their Pastors, with a caveat that agrees with some of the negative reviews found here: THIS WILL NOT MAKE CATHOLIC WHAT IS NOT ALREADY CATHOLIC! IT WILL NOT TURN BAD THEOLOGY OR LITURGICAL ABUSES INTO GOOD THEOLOGY OR LITURGY. It's like a computer: Garbage In--Garbage Out! That's what can make all the difference!

An excellent motivator and inspiration for laity and clergy using various
examples of Parishes throughout the United States who have created more
active laity involvement, brought more families into the parish and increased
their treasures.

Great book if you're looking for examples of liberal Catholic parishes. With a book entitled "Excellent Catholic Parishes", Paul Wilkes would have benefited from visiting parishes on both side of the equation as there are some great Catholic parishes out there that are thriving while staying faithful to the Magisterium, the teachings of the Church and the truth.

Excellent Catholic Parishes: The Guide to Best Places and Practices
Provides an inspiring survey of strategies that make a parish successful at fulfilling the prayer, "...Thy Kingdom come..." Eight different parish situations are presented, and the inspired, sometimes difficult, choices of the parish leaders are discussed, as are the responses of the People of God who make up the assembly in the parish. Encouraging, insightful, and hopeful to all who wish to improve parish life.

"Excellent Catholic Parishes" by Paul Wilkes was an accident on my way to reading another book. I ordered it by impulse and enjoyed it the moment it arrived. I am always looking for new ideas. While the ideas for Catholic Schools wasn't huge, as a parish staff member, it was fun to read what other parishes are doing.

Excellent Catholic Parishes is a must read for those already in parish ministry or those in the process of pursuing a place in the parish ministry setting. I was absolutely uplifted and inspired by this book. The parishes so eloquently portrayed in this book are exemplary in their particular strengths as pointed out by Wilkes and company. The vision of these parishes seems to be the key in making them so successful. I am grateful for all the time and effort Wilkes has put into such a project. This is a great learning tool for anyone who wants to grow and help lead the faithful to a greater spirituality by taking the Scripture of Sunday into daily living on Monday. Thank you for this gift.

This book, ostensibly for the practicing Catholic, profiles eight parishes in the United States in which the the Church is taught to be changing, stylish, and peculiar to circumstances, rather than the one, holy, apostolic, and Catholic Church it has been since the time of Christ. The parishes profiled in this book are run by laymen (to the delight of the pastors themselves) and the holding to and teaching Christian truth is not mentioned anywhere as the objective of a good Catholic parish. I am glad to have read this book, as these parishes will be easy for me to avoid in my travels.