`Roamin' Catholics' wander in search of new church

CLEVELAND (RNS) They call themselves "Roamin' Catholics," traveling from
church to church, looking for a new place to worship since Cleveland's
oldest black Catholic church was shut down more than a year ago.

Initially, there were nearly 50 of them from St. Adalbert Catholic
Church, which closed in June 2010, as part of a diocesewide downsizing.
But some found other worship communities -- both Catholic and
Protestant -- while others just quit church.

Phillis Fuller Clipps, 54, said she knows of 14 former Adalbert
members or families who joined Protestant churches, 29 who no longer
attend any church and 69 who joined other parishes.

But 16, including Clipps and her husband, are still displaced and
say they will continue to roam as a group until they get a ruling from
the Vatican on an appeal they filed, challenging Bishop Richard Lennon's
closing of St. Adalbert's.

More than a dozen Cleveland-area parishes closed by Lennon over the
last two years have appeals pending in Rome.

"We're praying for a miracle on 83rd Street," said Clipps, who hopes
to return someday to the shuttered St. Adalbert's, which was located at
that address.

Meanwhile, the Roamin' Catholics have not missed a Sunday Mass since
their church closed.

"We are the church and we still have our faith," said Joyce Sanders,
73, whose family had been part of St. Adalbert's roots for five
generations. "Our faith is carrying us on."

The Roamin' Catholics have a pool of about two dozen parishes they
regularly visit on both sides of town, partaking in Sunday rituals and
gauging how warmly they are received.

Cleveland Catholic Diocese spokesman Robert Tayek said the diocese
was concerned that the roamers are not registered with particular
parishes because in the event of a death, there could be complications
over where the funeral would be held.

"We hope they can find their way," he said.

The Catholic roamers said that if they win their appeal, they'll
stop their wandering and go back to their spiritual home. If not,
they'll stay together and decide in which parish to settle.

"The majority of the parishes have been very welcoming," said
Sanders. "A few of them have not."

But no matter how warm the welcome, it hasn't been enough to soften
some Adalbert members who, in bitterness over losing their church, have
turned their backs on religion.

George Gamble, 28, was baptized at St. Adalbert's when he was a
baby. It was his home away from home, he said, a place where he learned
his academic lessons and his Christian values.

"The ordinary black kid in our community doesn't get a chance to
experience a place like St. Adalbert's," he said. "I am very proud of my
St. Adalbert community -- so proud that I can't go to any other
community.

"My Sunday mornings are just another day," he said. "I'm just not
religiously focused these days. The tears are still in my eyes."
Rudy Thompson, 64, who runs a Sunoco station in the Buckeye
neighborhood on the city's East Side, raised his family at St.
Adalbert's.

He too has given up on the church.

"Bishop Lennon pulled the rug out from under us," said Thompson, who
did a lot of volunteer maintenance at the church. "We had a big, happy
family at St. Adalbert's, but it's all been taken away from us. When
something like that is broken up, what do you do?"

St. Adalbert's traced its roots to the long-defunct Our Lady of the
Blessed Sacrament, established in 1922 as Cleveland's first and only
black Catholic church.

By the 1960s, Blessed Sacrament, a small church, was in need of
major repairs, so the diocese closed it and the congregation migrated a
few blocks away to St. Adalbert's -- a dying Bohemian parish in a
predominantly black neighborhood.

The new tenants -- about 1,000 of them -- moved into the
twin-towered church, painted the faces of Jesus, Mary and Joseph black
and built a school.

When the diocese shuttered the 100-year-old building last year, the
congregation was down to about 225.

Lennon has closed 50 churches in the eight-county diocese over the
last two years, citing changing demographics and shortages of priests.
Most of the closings were in inner-city neighborhoods, including two
other black Cleveland churches.

"For many black families, the church is their whole life," said the
Rev. Dan Begin, who had pastored at two black churches in the city. "Now
there's nothing convenient for them to get to. A lot of them are just
not going to Mass. It's unfortunate."

Tayek said the gap in black Catholic churches created by the
closings was one of the diocese's biggest concerns during
reconfiguration discussions.

"We wrestled really hard on trying to close that hole," he said.
"And that's one we're still wrestling with."

Like the Adalbert roamers, Begin and his "scattered seeds" travel
once a month to different churches, where they hold African-style Masses
and dinners.

"I try to keep up with them as much as possible," said Begin. "I've
made a commitment to be their pastor."