Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 24, 1993 TAG: 9302240226
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GUSTAV SPOHN NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
ASHES GAIN ECUMENICAL POPULARITY
Each year on Ash Wednesday, between 6 a.m. and 7 p.m., more than 40,000 people pass through the doors of St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church in downtown Chicago.Directed by policemen and wooden horses outside and by ushers inside, the faithful wait in one of six long lines to have a priest smudge ashes on their foreheads.
According to the Rev. Charles Faso, pastor at St. Peter's, the people who show up represent the social spectrum - "people smelling of Chanel and people who just smell, people in $1,000 coats and people in rags."
Today signifies the beginning of the 40-day period of prayer and fasting known as "Lent," which culminates with Easter.
After the doors close, Faso goes out to the curb to minister to latecomers, repeating what he did over and over again in the sanctuary. He dips his thumb into a bowl of ashes and spreads them, in the sign of a cross, on the foreheads of people kneeling in front of him.
That is what the people have all come for, and to hear Faso or another of the priests repeat the words from Genesis, "You are dust, and unto dust you shall return."
While the numbers are imposing, one of the most remarkable things about Ash Wednesday at St. Peter's, according to Faso, is that many of the people who come for ashes are Protestants - United Methodists, Episcoplians, Lutherans, Presbyterians and others - despite the traditional view of the ritual as purely Catholic.
St. Peter's is an exceptional case, but there is evidence that use of ashes by Protestants is steadily growing all around the country. While some go to Catholic churches for the ritual thumbprint, others, increasingly, find Protestant ministers leading the rite.
"Because of the power of symbol, the ashes of this Wednesday are making a return among communions that have rejected them for centuries," says a February 1993 publication of The Liturgical Conference, a Maryland-based ecumenical group that encourages liturgical renewal.
Ralph VanLoon, executive director of The Liturgical Conference, says statistics on use of ashes among Protestants are unavailable although use appears to be "widespread" among Episcopalians and Lutherans - groups that have historically hewn to liturgical traditions similar to those of Catholicism.
But even among nonliturgical Protestants - United Methodists, Presbyterians and United Church of Christ, for example - the trend toward increased acceptance is clearly evident.
The Rev. Horace Allen Jr., professor of worship at the Boston University School of Theology, believes the surge of interest in ashes among Protestants is part of an "extraordinary sharing of liturgical practices," which blossomed after the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s and has increased along with the growing practice of intermarriage among Protestants and Catholics.
The Rev. Hoyt Hickman, director of resource development for the 9-million-member United Methodist Church, said use of ashes by United Methodists is not "increasing like wildfire, but it is steadily growing."
Adoption last year of a new United Methodist Book of Worship that contains provisions for distributing ashes, he predicted, will increase the popularity of the ritual.
Likewise, the 2.8-million-member Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is publishing a new Book of Common Worship this year that uses the following language: "We begin our journey to Easter with the sign of ashes. This ancient sign speaks of the frailty and uncertainty of human life and marks the penitence of this community."
But the use of ashes by individual congregations in both denominations predates the new worship books.
The Rev. Bill Barnes, pastor of the multiracial Edgehill United Methodist Church in Nashville, Tenn., said his congregation has used ashes for 10 or 12 years.
Edgehill follows the tradition of making ashes from the dried Palm Sunday branches saved from the previous year.
The enormous popularity of ashes in highly visible Catholic settings like St. Patrick's Cathedral on New York's Fifth Avenue - where lines spill out the doors, onto the sidewalks and around the cathedral all the way to Madison Avenue - adds to the perception of ashes as an exclusively Catholic event. On average, more than 30,000 people visit St. Patrick's on Ash Wednesday.
But that perception represents a "profound misunderstanding," not only of early church history but of more current practice as well, according to the Rev. Duncan Hanson of 300-member St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Aptos, Calif.
Hanson, who started offering ashes 15 years ago when he was at a church in southern Oregon.
In Aptos, a community of about 20,000 in Santa Cruz County, all of the major mainline Protestant churches offer ashes, according to Hanson.