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People Get Ready: Ritual, Solidarity, and Lived Ecclesiology in Catholic Roxbury
What does it mean to be a community of difference?
St. Mary of the Angels is a tiny underground Catholic parish in the heart of Boston’s Egleston Square. More than a century of local, national, and international migrations has shaped and reshaped the neighborhood, transforming streets into borderlines and the parish into a waystation. Today, the church sustains a community of Black, Caribbean, Latin American, and Euro-American parishioners from Roxbury and beyond.
In People Get Ready , Susan Reynolds draws on six years of ethnographic research to examine embodied ritual as a site of radical solidarity in the local church. Weaving together archived letters, oral histories, stories, photographs, newspaper articles, and newly examined archdiocesan documents, Reynolds traces how the people of St. Mary’s constructed rituals of solidarity as a practical foundation for building bridges across difference. She looks beyond liturgy to unexpected places, from Mass announcements to parish council meetings, from the Good Friday Via Crucis through neighborhood streets to protests staged in and around the church in the wake of Boston’s 2004 parish shutdowns. Through ethnography and Catholic ecclesiology, Reynolds argues for a retrieval of Vatican II’s notion of ecclesial solidarity as a basis for the mission of the local church in an age of migration, displacement, and change.
It is through the work of ritual, the story of St. Mary’s reveals, that we learn to negotiate the borders in our midst―to cultivate friendships, exercise power, build peace, and, in a real way, to survive.
St. Mary of the Angels is a tiny underground Catholic parish in the heart of Boston’s Egleston Square. More than a century of local, national, and international migrations has shaped and reshaped the neighborhood, transforming streets into borderlines and the parish into a waystation. Today, the church sustains a community of Black, Caribbean, Latin American, and Euro-American parishioners from Roxbury and beyond.
In People Get Ready , Susan Reynolds draws on six years of ethnographic research to examine embodied ritual as a site of radical solidarity in the local church. Weaving together archived letters, oral histories, stories, photographs, newspaper articles, and newly examined archdiocesan documents, Reynolds traces how the people of St. Mary’s constructed rituals of solidarity as a practical foundation for building bridges across difference. She looks beyond liturgy to unexpected places, from Mass announcements to parish council meetings, from the Good Friday Via Crucis through neighborhood streets to protests staged in and around the church in the wake of Boston’s 2004 parish shutdowns. Through ethnography and Catholic ecclesiology, Reynolds argues for a retrieval of Vatican II’s notion of ecclesial solidarity as a basis for the mission of the local church in an age of migration, displacement, and change.
It is through the work of ritual, the story of St. Mary’s reveals, that we learn to negotiate the borders in our midst―to cultivate friendships, exercise power, build peace, and, in a real way, to survive.
240 pages, Paperback
Published January 17, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 3, 2023
I loved this book and wish every Catholic would read it and take it to heart. I will not try to pretend that I am able to live up to the Christian example set by the parishioners of St. Mary of the Angels, but it is a laudable goal.
In a Boston winter, nightfall begins in the middle of the afternoon. Ahh, I remember it well. My favorite parts of this book are its descriptions of Boston, of Egleston Square, and of Saint Mary of the Angels parish.
I've noticed that the best homilies are derived from the life experiences of the homilist. I believe that explains the excellence of this book; it was developed from Susan Bigelow Reynolds' life experiences as she was a member of St. Mary of the Angels parish working on her doctorate.
One of my lesson from this book is that there are two meanings for "communion." One is the Catholic sacrament; the other describes a relationship among people. As I read this, I could not help thinking that the Catholic Church places too much emphasis on experiencing the real presence in the communion wafer and too little on experiencing the real presence in my fellow man or woman.
In a Boston winter, nightfall begins in the middle of the afternoon. Ahh, I remember it well. My favorite parts of this book are its descriptions of Boston, of Egleston Square, and of Saint Mary of the Angels parish.
I've noticed that the best homilies are derived from the life experiences of the homilist. I believe that explains the excellence of this book; it was developed from Susan Bigelow Reynolds' life experiences as she was a member of St. Mary of the Angels parish working on her doctorate.
One of my lesson from this book is that there are two meanings for "communion." One is the Catholic sacrament; the other describes a relationship among people. As I read this, I could not help thinking that the Catholic Church places too much emphasis on experiencing the real presence in the communion wafer and too little on experiencing the real presence in my fellow man or woman.
August 27, 2024
Very interesting to me because it is about my neighborhood. Also encouraging to understand the way that the local Catholic church has helped to knit people together through gangs, violence and changing demographics in an immigrant community over the past century.
However, the theoretical arguments about the meaning of ritual and solidarity become rather confusing to me.
However, the theoretical arguments about the meaning of ritual and solidarity become rather confusing to me.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews