Amazon.com Review
Parish!--an expanded collection of Robert F. Keeler's Pulitzer Prize-winning
Newsday series about St. Brigid's parish on Long Island--is the best kind of religious journalism. He's fanatically faithful to the sensitivities of both critical and credulous readers and also to the experiences of the worshippers who are the subjects of his stories. He shows, in concrete terms, from hour to hour and from week to week, how people gather at St. Brigid's "to be church for each other" in a multicultural and multitheological parish that embodies many of the best advances of Vatican II.
--Michael Joseph Gross
From Library Journal
St. Brigid is a parish in Westbury, New York, which, following the Irish custom of dedicating water wells to St. Brigid, became a well for people to gather around. Expanding on his 16-month series of reports on this Catholic parish, Newsday writer/editor Keeler offers a blueprint for what a parish "community" can really become. Keeler traces the history of the parish under two pastors with distinctive styles, also detailing the growth of an ordained staff who serve over 23,000 Catholics from diverse backgrounds. Starting in the post-Vatican II era, Father Fred Schaefer reshaped the parish, with community input. In 1989, he was replaced by Father Francis Xavier Gaeta, who continued the idea of living the gospel and making people feel welcome. In addition to engaging interviews with individuals whose lives were enriched by their involvement in the parish, there is a separate chapter on what parishioners can do in their own parishes nationwide. Recommended for all collections.?Leo Kriz, West Des Moines Lib., Iowa
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
