13. Interview with Johan vanParys (Part 1)

Interview with Johan vanParys, Director of Worship
Basilica of St. Mary (Minneapolis),
6 November from 10.30 am.
Amy led, Greg scribed

FF: Basically, we have three questions today. The first question is about you personally, how you got involved in the Basilica, and a little bit of your life story and how the story of the Basilica and yours intersected with each other, and what it is you do here and how you are part of what happens here. The second question is about the value of the ministry that the Basilica is doing, primarily with young adults because that's our focus here, and how that works out in the community here surrounding and the broader community of the Twin Cities. And then the big question for us is what is the genius behind what happens here. Do you want to start by just telling a little about yourself?

Sure. I was born in Belgium. I am part of a very Catholic family. At this moment however I am the only one still practicing. They are not part of the church except for baptism, marriage. Life cycle Christians. I was very much involved with the church most of my life. As a teenager my brother and I went to all sorts of youth rallies, hurrah for Jesus things, jazz masses and that sort of thing. Which now I look at and think 'how could I ever do that?' But we did and it gave us life I suppose. I went to Seminary and my brother went to a state university, and we took different paths. He completely removed himself from the Catholic Church, whereas it drove me closer into the Catholic Church. I spent two years in Seminary and then left Seminary and spent five years in a Benedictine abbey while going to the Catholic university of Louvain in Belgium and studying archaeology and art history. I finished that and I was very much interested in the Middle Ages, and thought the Middle Ages, religion and art are so intertwined in western Europe that I wanted to learn more about the religion behind the arts, the archaeology. Now I wanted religion so I started studying comparative religious studies with emphasis on the Middle Ages. My dissertation topic for art history was 15th century _______ missal which brought me to the intersection of liturgy and art. Those have become my two mains areas of interest, and where I feel very comfortable. I feel quite informed in those areas and in the intersection of those two areas. After I finished my degrees in Louvain I decided I wasn't quite done yet so I would go and really pursue liturgy and I went to the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. That's where I got my doctorate in theology with a concentration in liturgy. My dissertation was on new trends in baptismal architecture, again trying to look at anthropology, sociology of water and how that works with theology and architecture and art. When I finished my course work I started to work for the Center for Liturgy at Notre Dame, and got sent out throughout the country to do workshops and consultations with parishes and dioceses, particularly concentrating on art and religion. My position there was associate director for art and architecture for worship. When there were job cuts coming around, of course the position that pertains to art is one of the first ones to go, so mine was cut. Somehow at the very same time I got a phone call from this place asking if I'd be interested in applying for a job and head over here. I and thought 'no', because I intended to spend my life in academic work. I'd never done anything except academic work and I didn't think it would be a good fit for the Basilica and myself. But I had two friends here who said 'you know, just humor us, just come here'. So I came here for an interview and I was very much impressed by the place, and I thought, well, maybe God is calling me to do this. So I did apply and I was offered the position and then accepted it. That was six years ago.

FF: It sounds like your gifts and what the Basilica wanted from you have been a good match. Has that proved to be true?

Yes, it has. I'm much better at pastoral work than I ever thought I would be and the parish is much more of an academically inspiring place than I thought it might be. Our congregation is highly educated and expects well thought out speech and activities. So that works well. Plus I continue to lecture with seminaries and for dioceses. I do consultations still as well around the country so I've kept that aspect going too. My ideal position would be where I can teach on a regular basis at a Seminary and keep my foot in parish work as well. But for now this is great.

FF: From talking to people, liturgy is a big part of what happens here at the Basilica. We went to worship and just from talking to people who are doing programmatic stuff - like George doing RCIA and Janel and Father Michael - all have said that liturgy is the center of what happens here. How does that work for you, how does that play out?

The Second Vatican Council, one of the documents, Sacro Sanctum ________ was the first document promulgated by the Council, which was a document on the liturgy. Paragraph 10 or 11 speaks about celebration of Eucharist and to paraphrase it, the celebration of the Eucharist is the source and summit of everything the Christian community does. And I think that's not just a fleeting statement, I think it's one of the most essential statements in that whole document, because it speaks of the Eucharist as the heart, where everything begins and where everything ends. I really believe that and I think we have been able to cause the parish and the staff to embrace that. Over the course of the years that I have been here we have seen how in our faith formation we have moved from catechesis to lectionary-based catechesis to liturgy-based catechesis. We have moved to the liturgy being the central part. If you look at our mission statement the first point speaks of how we are committed to quality liturgy, faith formation and pastoral care. But liturgy is the first. And we also commit quite a bit of our resources - be that personnel, financial resources, volunteer resources - to the liturgy.

FF: How do you see liturgy impacting other things like pastoral care and faith formation? It seems to me there's a connection there. Can you flesh that out a little bit?

I'm often asked 'what is good liturgy?' And at first one would be tempted to say good liturgy is when you have a good presider who gives a good sermon, when you have a good choir with great music, when you have vestments that are top quality, when you have an environment that is great, when the church is beautiful, when the bells ring before and after. You know, all these criteria. And all of them are very important of course, but I think good liturgy happens when this happens. A couple of years ago WCCO came and did something like what you're doing right now. I think maybe you should watch that video because they were very enamored with why should all these young people flock to the Basilica. So they came and I talked at great length with the people who were producing the program. Ultimately I was not really satisfied with their answer. There was no answer really, except for maybe that everybody who comes here recognizes themselves, at least in part, in somebody else. So they really emphasized the diversity of this community. That no one really ought to feel as a stranger because there's always somebody who partially looks like them, who partially sounds like them, who partially walks like them, dresses like them. A couple of years later Mother Teresa died. I was still searching for why, you know, what is good liturgy, why do people come here? The television stations did stories on Mother Teresa, and one of the stations went to the people who live under the bridge, our neighbors, and asked them 'Who to you is Mother Teresa?' They said Janice Anderson, who is our director of social outreach and the Basilica of Saint Mary. Good liturgy happens when it's not inward navel-gazing activity. Good liturgy happens when it is outward and sends people into world to be Christ to the world. Last night I did a talk on celebration of the Eucharist. Catholics are so tempted to give great respect to Christ present in the Eucharist. In the Word proclaimed, in the people gathered, the presider, but above all in the sacred bread and wine, the blessed Sacrament. And I told them this story, that one year it was the feast of Corpus Christi, where we above all celebrate the body and blood of Christ, and we had no priest here, so we couldn't really do a Mass, which is quite wrong. But it gave me the occasion to do what I had always wanted to do, which was get into the pulpit and yell out 'You are the body of Christ'. So the presentation last night about the celebration of the Eucharist really became a talk about how we are called to be Eucharist to the world, to be the body of Christ to the world for the salvation of the world.

FF: So faith formation is a part of that, learning to understand that?

Yes. I believe that liturgy is this. I have two operative actions. The first action is that every time we worship we get a glimpse of the heavenly worship. Every time we sit at the table of the Lord we get a glimpse of what the table of the Lord will be in heaven. 'On this holy mountain the Lord will provide a banquet of rich food and of choice wine' - from the book of wisdom, from Isaiah. That vision really inspires me to really look at liturgy as a foreshadowing of the heavenly. So every time we are touched by worship we get a glimpse. The second axiom is that obviously this heavenly Jerusalem has not completely arrived yet. In the liturgy we are formed, rehearsed I think is a good word, in patterns of behavior and thought patterns which make us more like Christ every time, Sunday after Sunday after Sunday. And this will help to hasten the coming of the end times, the conclusion of the promise. I look at the liturgy as the hands of a potter, and we are the clay. Sunday after Sunday we are molded into the image of Christ, into the body of Christ, so that we can be Christ to the world. So, what we are trying to do in the liturgy is then lived out in the world and talked about in our faith formation. There are two pillars to parish life - there is the spiritual pillar and the temporal. Obviously we need to be concerned about being able to pay the bills, that sort of thing. Then the spiritual pillar, which is the one I am more familiar with. And that spiritual pillar has three aspects - I call it the spiritual triangle. It consists of worship, of education, and of Christian life. We worship in order to be molded into who we need to be. We are educated in order to understand who we need to be. And the Christian life is being sent into the world in order to be who we need to be. So those three pillars work together constantly but I think the driving force and the heart of it all is worship. I think one of the successes of this place … when we have new member dinners we ask them 'Why have you become a member?' And we keep growing, and here now we are 5200 households. We thought we would level off at 5000 but we keep growing. They say, and I'm sort of generalizing, but they say three things. First of all they are attracted by the building, because it looks like a church. The second is, once we are in the building we are just enamored by worship and we keep coming back, because it's not just worship for worship's sake, but because it calls us and causes us to make a difference in the world. Now, with regard to this building, to some it is just an architectural piece, but I am a consultant to a parish in Wisconsin and they are trying to figure out whether they should build a new church. They had basically decided yes, until September 11 came around and we have had to and are rethinking what we need to do. But I told them the story a couple of weeks ago of this church. Archbishop Ireland in the early parts of century decided he was going to build two churches - one in St. Paul to seat 3000, and then one in Minneapolis as well. It's uncertain why he wanted to build this church, but gossiping tongues say that St. Paul was already a bastion of Catholicism whereas Minneapolis was rather a bastion of Lutheranism. Those gossiping tongues say that maybe he thought that if he built a monument to Catholicism in Minneapolis that Catholicism would grow there. Whether that's the case or not, I think what he did build was a beacon of faith, of hope, and of light in the landscape of Minneapolis. That became so clear on September 11. That day I was in the church doing my usual things and my cell phone rang, I had forgotten to turn if off. It was my father calling from Belgium and he said 'Have you been watching the news?' I said 'No, I'm in the church'. And he said you'd better go and turn on CNN and watch what's going on. So I did. And as I stood there amazed with my colleagues, the telephone started to ring. Hundreds of calls. There were some people we could recognize as parishioners but many weren't. By 10.30 am we had decided we had to have a prayer service. It was on news by 11 o'clock and we did do a prayer service. As I walked into the church, it was an inter-faith service, I recognized people from the back. There were many backs I did not recognize. There were people wearing the yamakah __________, there were people there who were wearing the traditional Muslim dress, there were some Tibetan monks in their saffron robes. This place has become a beacon not for Catholicism but it has become a beacon of faith, hope, love, peace, justice; where people can come whatever state they're in. That became very clear on that dramatic day, but I think it's the case every day to a lesser extent. Why people come here, why young people come here, is probably for those reasons. Because this is a beacon of something else. It's a beacon that goes beyond one denominational structure. Although of course obviously we are a Roman Catholic cathedral church. Rather than limiting us I think it opens us up to many more possibilities.

FF: It seems that in liturgy and in what you do are unashamedly Roman Catholic. Do you think that, in its own way, has an intrinsic appeal to young adults?

For one thing, I think good ecumenism relies, is built upon honesty about one's own identity. Not only this, but honesty. I think often we are tempted to be self-effacing and almost apologetic about who we are in our faith tradition, thinking that that will allow us to be, but we get to a common denominator which ends up being nothing. I think it's wonderful to be unashamedly Catholic. However, at the same time, we embrace those who are unashamedly Lutheran or unashamedly Muslim or Jewish or Buddhist, and welcoming them with open arms and treating them as equals. One of our mottos is that we are traditional church with a modern message, and I think that is very appealing to young people as well. Because at the same time I think young people and people in general are attracted to something traditional. We don't, at this point in time, need novelties. In the '60s the Roman Catholic Church had this hunger for new things, which was what we needed at the time. But luckily we have passed that now and are happy with traditional things, things that stabilize us, but not a tradition that stifles us. Rather, a tradition which gives us a basis on which to think anew, broader, wider. What I also wanted to say about that, about this building, is that after the liturgy was over on September 11, some of the television stations asked questions about why do you think people come here. I have this image about how this building is two things at once - it is a strong building, and gives people feeling of strength. A mighty fortress is our God, an architectural form of it. But then once you are inside there are the warm embraces of the liturgy, of the candlelight, of the soft lines of the building. So it's both strong and welcoming and embracing. And I think, not only is that the case with the building, but it is the case with what we are trying to be as a community as well. Offer strength. Our pastor was in New York when all of this happened, and so we were having a meeting with the senior staff. People were saying 'What do we do?' Well, we do what we do best. We get out our prayer books and we pray, we educate people and we offer people strength in this time of need.

FF: I noticed when I came to worship that there were a lot of people assisting, your communion assistants were many and of varying ages. The same for readers or lectors. Father Michael said he would never have guessed that he'd have a 6th grade kid reading out of the lectern but he did and it was good. How do you work that with the volunteers?

Continue to Johan Part 2