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By Priscilla Greear, Staff Writer
DALTON—A predominantly Hispanic congregation gathered Nov. 27
at St. Joseph’s Church for the first Mass in the new church, which is
providing the diverse community needed space to better grow and live together
as one parish family.
The growing, ethnically altered parish is a quintessential example
of the impact on the church of the steady Hispanic immigration from Latin
America to North Georgia, where in this archdiocese baptized Hispanic Catholics
now appear to outnumber all other Catholics.
Building committee chairperson Mary Herd recalled the
parish’s growth in both size and diversity over the past decade
necessitating both a new church and a new location. When she joined the parish
20 years ago it had about 200 families with a sprinkling of Latino households.
The parish now has about 825 Hispanic families in its 1,100 households, not
including the many unregistered, and on weekends has drawn up to 2,100 people.
Herd said the building project was an opportunity for the two communities to
join together.
“Ten years ago we were just beginning to have Hispanic growth
... We’ve had tremendous growth in the last 10 years. When I came to town
I knew one Hispanic lady that sang in the choir,” she said.
“It’s been a hard process of the two communities not working together
and this was an opportunity to do something together ... We’ve worked
together on committees, fund-raising, on planning the church ... Because we
were in such a small church before, they had the Hispanic Mass and we had ours.
We didn’t interact. With the larger space we’ll have more space for
doing things in room we haven’t had before.”
The parish formerly worshipped at a 200-seat capacity S. Thornton
Avenue building dedicated in 1957. The new 32,000 square-foot facility located
at 1775 Old Haig Mill Road has a church that seats about 600 and also
classrooms and a parish hall.
For the dedication Mass, some 800 people pulled up to the brick
church overlooking a reservoir and hills and searched for parking spaces with
the help of friendly attendants. Passing through the courtyard and below an
archway reading “House of God, Gate of Heaven” in Latin, a compromise
between English and Spanish, they soon filled up the church. The church’s
complementary tomato red carpet and yellow-toned walls suggested the
collaborative efforts Anglos and Hispanics had made to get to dedication day.
The thoroughly bilingual Mass was celebrated by Archbishop John F.
Donoghue and concelebrated by pastor Father Bill Hoffman, parochial vicar
Father Abel Guerrero Orta and other archdiocesan priests. Other local clergy
also attended, including Dr. John Rossing, pastor of Christ the King Lutheran
Church, which will occupy St. Joseph’s old building and site. The service
opened as project and parish leaders presented keys, ledgers, plans and a
parish history to the archbishop, who then sprinkled holy water and blessed the
people and building.
In his homily, also read in Spanish, the archbishop described the
dedication as a time for a happy cry of relief and wisdom as the faithful join
themselves to the Lord and his sacrificial love. As when parents baptize their
baby and consider the child’s responsibility to grow in love of God,
Archbishop Donoghue told parishioners that it is a time for them to consider
the great things God now expects of them.
“This church has its own future—its own destiny. It has
been raised, built, supported, funded, and filled with the spirit of
you—its people—but now, it becomes the dwelling place of God’s
spirit, as the Gospel teaches us, and it becomes the home for the needs of all
who will come here—ourselves, our children, and the Catholics of Dalton
from now, hopefully, until the world shall end, and there will no longer be any
need for churches in places, since the only place will be heaven, and the only
church, the heart of our merciful and loving Father,” he said.
“But now, and for the future that we must foresee, this is
our Church, our place of refuge, and the source of all our strength, in Jesus
Christ our Lord. And it becomes now, our duty, our sacred duty, to protect this
temple, to hold up its walls, and to make it the most beautiful, the most
inviting of places, wherein all who come, might find God, and might find the
power, the grace, the love that He gives us through the Sacraments that will be
celebrated here.”
He reminded the faithful that their permanent home is with God.
“Though we may fear what is not known—though we may worry for the
sake of our children, and though we may grieve at the sacrifices we must make,
if our children are to be happy—sacrifices of the homes we may have left
so that they could have a better life—sacrifices of what we might wish for
ourselves, so that they may have it in our stead—our grief is but a moment
of doubt before the declaration of faith that our Church bids us make, and that
prayer leads us to make, when we truly consider what is good for our
souls—the proclamation with which we began ... the shattering of our
doubt, and the firm implantation of our future: ‘Do not be grieved, for
the joy of the Lord is your strength.’”
The archbishop thanked Father Dan Stack, immediate past pastor,
who initiated the project three years ago, Father Hoffman and all supporters.
“I want to thank each and every one of you who made great
sacrifices to build this place for the glory of God. I know it was not an easy
thing. I realize how much you have done and how in the future you will continue
to support this parish,” he said. “My prayer is that God will
continue to bless the people of Dalton.”
The archbishop then anointed the altar with oil to the sounds of
piano and flute. He and Father Hoffman incensed the church and the pastor lit
the altar candles after which the church lights were turned on and the
bilingual choir sang “Christ Be Our Light.” Other songs included
“Iglesia Peregrina” or “Pilgrim Church.” After processing
through the church, the archbishop placed the Blessed Sacrament in the
tabernacle.
Father Hoffman thanked local clergy, former pastors, musicians and
others and presented an icon of the apostle Thomas, patron saint of architects,
to Herd, an architect. “Thank you to everybody that helped over the last
four years from the bottom of my heart,” she replied.
The pastor spoke of a statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe and Blessed
Juan Diego donated for the parish courtyard by Roberto Garza of the Terza Corp.
of Monterrey, Mexico, in appreciation of the pastoral care shown to Mexican
immigrants of Dalton by the parish. The Mass was followed by a reception.
Immigrants have been prominent on the parish rolls since its early
days; the parish began in the 1840s and ‘50s when Irish workmen came to
the area to work on the railroad. Land was bought in 1852 for the first church
and during the Civil War federal troops used the church building as a hospital
for soldiers with smallpox. The troops burned the church in 1865 and
construction on a new building began in 1869, with the church receiving $5,000
in 1888 through a war reparations claim. The church became inactive in the
early 1900s and the building was sold. Fewer than 10 people were being
ministered to in the 1930s. In 1941 Redemptorist priests came to Dalton and
reestablished the church and in 1943 the Thornton Avenue site was purchased. In
1957 the building was completed and, after the departure of the Redemptorists
in 1967, the church was torn down and rebuilt in 1977.
The facility set on 19 acres consists of a church, education
building and parish hall and features 14 classrooms, five offices, a conference
room and kitchen. It was designed by Thomas Gordon Smith Architects of South
Bend, Ind., and built by Gene Rogers Construction Co., Dalton. The $4.7 million
project was funded by the parish in conjunction with the archdiocesan Capital
Campaign and construction began in April 1999. Stucco building sides will
permit future additions.
“We know right now we don’t have enough classroom space.
We already have Sunday school three times on Sunday and on Wednesday night. Now
we have double the amount of classrooms and we’re still not going to be
able to cut back on the amount of Sunday school,” Herd said. The stucco
section was requested “so we could easily expand the wall at the back of
the church.”
The committee chair said the parish sought a location near the
interstate for the southward bound. They wanted a simple, classic style for the
church, which is punctuated by deep sets of arches and modeled on
Counter-Reformation churches in Rome, to please all parish ethnic groups which
also include Africans, Asians and Europeans. She said Hispanics and Anglos
worked well together despite some tensions and need for “tedious”
translating, noting more are becoming bilingual.
“It’s been a very enjoyable experience. I had a
wonderful building committee. We had an interior design committee. I fought
yellow walls for a long time,” said Herd, who headed the project while
caring for her five children at home. “There was still a little bit of
‘we do it this way and this other way.’ But I think there’s a
lot of people in the parish committed to working together and I’m hoping
the new church will foster that.”
Costa Rican immigrant Leidy Gonzalez, who has lived in Dalton for
11 years after moving from Los Angeles and is married to a Mexican immigrant,
is one of those committed.
“With this church I learn to be more close with the people,
to share with the American people in this church. Since this is a small town,
in this church I’ve learned to know other parishioners and to share with
English-speaking brothers and to get to know them better and to better know all
the races in the church,” she said.
She thinks the new building will strengthen the parish foundation.
“I’m very happy. I appreciate (Father) Dan Stack because
he’s the one who started the idea for the project and we feel very happy.
A lot of the people do. I appreciate God first and him second. He’s a very
important person here,” Gonzalez said. The new building will help unite
the parish “because we built it together. We’re working together and
this is for everybody.”
“I think now it’s going to be better and better. More
people, they have more projects, more opinions, activities for the kids. They
can learn more about God. They’re going to have fields for soccer and
softball and that’s good for the children ... The family can be more close
to the church,” Gonzalez continued.
Father Hoffman, who is bilingual and has served as a missionary in
Latin America, also shared much hope for the new church and the ability to
expand there.
The dedication “was a great occasion. I thought we’d
have a full church,” he said, but “in addition to the people
seated” half again as many were standing at the back and in the foyer.
The pastor said the building was constructed with expansion in
mind and initial plans are to add on in 10 years. He recalled the cramped
closed-circuit days on Thornton Avenue.
“We just couldn’t live in that small place anymore. We
had too many kids for our catechism classes. We had a closed-circuit television
in a hall upstairs ... More people would be up there than in the church,”
he said. “We’re just trying to get out of the old place and into this
one.”
The pastor said the biggest area of parish growth now is among
children in the church. The immigrants, many of whom are Mexican, work largely
in the carpet industry, as well as in house cleaning, construction and in
restaurants and the parish also brings the Gospel to some of the estimated
30,000 Latinos in Dalton by holding Mass and catechism classes in Hispanic
neighborhoods. “The biggest challenge is to help people feel like this is
their home. It’s everybody’s home. They have to respect it, treat it
as community property. It’s a mixture of learning how to care for the
building and do the things that help other people,” Father Hoffman said.
“You have to learn to live with each other. For the new arrivals from
Mexico (they) have to learn new ways of doing things that people do in this
country and people who have lived here a long time have to cut some slack for
the newcomers. They can’t adapt to the way things are done in the U.S.
overnight.” |
