| Black Catholics raise joyful noise in the
Bronx
By PATRICIA LEFEVERE
Bronx, N.Y.
Making a joyful noise unto the Lord has been the hallmark of the
St. Augustine Gospel Choir in the South Bronx for almost 30 years. Last month
the jazz quartet of St. Augustine Catholic Church in New Orleans joined the
18-voice Bronx choir for a liturgy that lasted three hours and brought 500
worshipers to their feet -- singing, clapping, embracing and blessing one
another in decibels that rang in heaven.
Powerful rhythms and harmonies seemed at times to shake the
church’s rafters. Performers and worshipers at the Feb. 16 “pre-Mardi
Gras Jazz Mass” went on to enjoy a soul food luncheon. With little time
for digestion, choir members changed from their turquoise and gold robes to
dresses and dashikis rich in African design and color, and continued to sing,
shout and clap hands in a concert that filled the afternoon, church and
neighborhood with glad sounds of praise.
A blizzard prevented members of the St. Augustine Gospel Choir in
Washington, D.C., from joining the celebration.
At the start of Mass, Fr. Thomas Fenlon, pastor of the Bronx
parish, pointed to the statue of St. Augustine, the fifth-century bishop and
doctor of the church from Hippo near ancient Carthage in North Africa, and
announced that the special Black History Month celebration would be in his
honor.
The St. Augustine churches in New Orleans, Washington and the
Bronx began before the Civil War. A group of free blacks living in the Faubourg
Treme section of New Orleans built the first of the three in 1841. The
Washington parish traces its heritage to 1858 and to the efforts of a group of
dedicated emancipated black Catholics.
The Bronx parish began in 1849, but the church was destroyed by
fire in 1894. Three months later construction began on the present edifice,
which was dedicated in 1895. In 1906 a school was added; today it educates 230
youngsters.
Although the Bronx parish was largely German and Irish during its
first century, the earlier immigrants headed for the suburbs after World War
II. Black families, most of them Protestants, moved in. St. Augustine’s
pastor at the time, Fr. Cornelius Drew, attracted 550 new Catholics to the
church, largely through his classes designed specifically for
African-Americans. Many of the original black families have remained loyal St.
Augustine parishioners.
Today the parish has about 500 names in the book and counts
“350 on a good day,” said Fenlon, who became pastor in July. Sixty
percent of churchgoers trace their heritage to African roots; 40 percent are
Hispanic, mostly of Puerto Rican and Dominican ancestry.
Fenlon noted the many churches in the neighborhood. “The
church gives faith and hope to those who don’t have hope.”
The parish serves the Bronx House of Detention, a prison for 700
men located on a boat. It also has outreach to a 200-bed women’s shelter
that is across the street from the church. Every Monday morning some 200
families visit the parish pantry to receive a bag of groceries from Bob Blair
and his volunteers.
The parish and the neighborhood both challenge the cliché
that “when you step outside in the South Bronx, you’re in Fort
Apache,” said Fr. John Gilvey, an Oblate of St. Francis de Sales. Gilvey,
a speech and communications professor at St. Joseph’s College, Brooklyn,
resides at St. Augustine and assists on the weekend. He calls the parishioners
“family.”
“They are the most attentive audience I’ve ever preached
to and are very vocal in their support,” he said.
Gilvey said he’d always wanted to learn how to celebrate the
liturgy the way African-Americans do. Fr. Keith Outlaw, the former pastor,
“mentored me in the process,” he said. “He told me to watch
what’s going on and move into it when I feel comfortable.”
At the jazz Mass it was clear that Gilvey and Fenlon both were
comfortable moving rhythmically with the musicians and singers as they
processed in to the tune of “This Little Light of Mine” and then
joined in the stirring hymn, “I Can Go to God in Prayer.”
The musicians performed the penitential rite in Calypso style.
Cantor Brenda Harris of St. Augustine in New Orleans led the responsorial
psalm.
Before the Mass ended, the performers and the entire congregation
united their voices in “When the Saints Go Marching In” and
“Down by the River Side” and sang “We Shall Overcome” as
the memorial acclamation. Outlaw and Bronx Gospel singer Deniece Wonge offered
a closing duet.
Fenlon invited the New Orleans and Washington artists to the
church after the Bronx Gospel Choir performed at the Louisiana church last
year. He also asked Divine Word Fr. Jerome LeDoux, pastor of the New Orleans
church, to preside and preach. LeDoux, 73, did both and also danced exuberantly
during several hymns.
Three of the four New Orleans musicians represented three
generations of one black family. Keyboardist Betty Williams is the mother of
drummer Herlin Riley and grandmother of Joseph Williams, trombonist and
trumpeter.
Leon Vaughn, a vocalist and keyboardist, said he loves to praise
the Lord with his music. The Baptist singer said he is on the road half the
Sundays of each year. His favorite hymn remains “Amazing Grace.”
“It’s very touching. It gets to the inner man of everybody. It tells
you that you’ve come so far by grace. Grace is nothing you got, it’s
something you get.”
Community is the abundant grace of St. Augustine in the Bronx,
said Roger Repohl, parish administrator. “Parishioners in the inner city
don’t keep to themselves. They’re not a bunch of strangers coming
together on Sunday.
“Community is all they have. They’re very hospitable and
caring. They just give their blood for this church,” said Repohl, one of
four white parishioners and the church’s chief administrator for five
years.
“I’m a utility pole,” Repohl said, describing his
job, which includes seeing that staff, computers, workers and the parish
ledgers are all in good order. The $300,000 operating budget receives a
$150,000 subsidy from the archdiocese annually.
On Sundays, Repohl directs the choir for the English Mass at
nearby Our Lady of Victory Parish and plays piano at its Spanish Mass. He also
has a second career as beekeeper to St. Augustine’s three hives that last
year produced a thousand pounds of “sweet honey from the South
Bronx.”
He learned beekeeping from St. Augustine’s pastor emeritus,
Fr. Robert Jeffers. The job is a “labor of love,” because bees are
“happy, happy creatures, who are so focused on their task and have no
interest in human beings.”
As many as a quarter million bees have colonized the flowering
trees and plants in the Genesis Park Community Garden located next to the
church. “No one has been stung except the beekeeper,” said Repohl,
who has gathered a half dozen “neighborhood kids with a gentle
spirit,” dressed them in bee suits and taught them how to harvest the
honey.
“Send us your social workers, your physicians,” Repohl
said. “We’ll take them.”
Gospel singers and jazz musicians need not apply.
Patricia Lefevere is an NCR special report
writer.
National Catholic Reporter, March 14,
2003
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