THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 2, 1996 TAG: 9605310221
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY JANIE BRYANT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 191 lines
THE REV. Thomas J. Caroluzza still remembers the pain he felt when he had to leave Portsmouth's Church of the Resurrection for a Roanoke church.
``It takes about 4 1/2 hours to get to Roanoke, and it took me 10 1/2 hours to get there,'' Caroluzza said. ``I just didn't want to go. I just kept stopping.''
He was leaving a church he had helped found in 1971 - a time when the world was changing and so was the Catholic church.
In Churchland, a community of Catholics was embracing that change.
``Everybody had a sense that we were forging new territory because Vatican II had just happened,'' Caroluzza recalled, referring to the updating of Roman Catholic religious doctrine. ``We were starting new and saying what would you build if you had the dreams of Vatican II. How do those dreams take on concrete?''
It was a wonderful time to be starting a parish, Caroluzza remembered. And that ``pioneering spirit'' brought a community of parishioners closer together.
``Some people said it was Camelot for them,'' he said. ``It was also our Pentecost. It was our outpouring of the Holy Spirit in a very new way.''
Caroluzza had expected to be a part of that church for 10 years. But problems with a Roanoke church resulted in his being reassigned after just five years at Resurrection.
But this weekend Caroluzza returned to Camelot.
He was scheduled to preside at a Mass on Saturday night that launched a nine-day celebration of the church's 25th anniversary.
The Rev. James Carr, who has been pastor of Resurrection for the last five years, will preside at the final rededication liturgy to be held June 9.
Church of the Resurrection was started as a mission of St. Paul's Catholic Church, a downtown parish that was well into its second century.
With its stained glass windows, antique furnishings and gothic interior, St. Paul's was typical of the church in which many of Resurrection's members had grown up.
But something quite different would be built in Churchland.
Resurrection's sanctuary was modern and unembellished, designed to put the focus on people.
The pulpit area brought the priest down to the parishioners who sat on plain wooden benches, positioned so the people faced each other during worship.
There were no stained glass windows or statues of saints.
But the absence of those things did not bother Susanne Dutton when she first saw the sanctuary.
``Maybe I'm different, but I was not looking for statues when I got here,'' Dutton said. ``I was struck by the fact that as you entered before a Mass, people were talking to one another.
``There was communication, hugging, just catching up on one another's lives rather than people kneeling at kneelers and praying.''
Dutton compares the experience to the early church where the people were the saints.
``And that's how we understand it,'' she said. ``One Christmas, we put mirrors all up on the side of the church to emphasize the idea that you are called to be the saints today.''
That focus on the people being the church, rather than the building, came naturally to members of Resurrection.
They had left the downtown parish for a church closer to home and had started without a building.
They met in homes. They celebrated Masses in the auditorium of the old Churchland High School or in nearby churches.
``The greatest of all stories there had to do with how the ecumenical community welcomed us since we had no building,'' said Caroluzza, who has been at Holy Spirit in Virginia Beach for the past 10 years. ``The first was Green Acres Presbyterian. They just opened their space.
``It is very hard for a church to do that, to say you can have our church from 8:30 to 10 every Sunday. And they did it for two years.''
His favorite story is the Christmas a Methodist minister went to his congregation and said, ``There is no room in the inn and the Catholics would like a midnight Mass.''
Members of Centenary United Methodist agreed to change their services so that Resurrection members could hold their Christmas Eve midnight Mass there.
``That's what Christmas is all about, and it was just wonderful,'' Caroluzza said. ``That was the tone of ecumenism in 1971.''
Caroluzza remembers when the church dedicated its new building at Cedar Lane in 1974. All of the Churchland ministers were there, and one of the community's rabbis, wearing his prayer shawl, did the first reading of the Catholic dedication liturgy in Hebrew.
When Israeli Olympic athletes were killed by terrorists in Germany, Caroluzza got on the phone and started calling people. About 200 Catholics showed up for a prayer service at the synagogue.
``I think the whole spirit of working together, being together and praying together - that's what strikes me about my memories,'' he said. ``The second was Vatican II was only five years old . . . and so there was a spirit of adventure, of trying new things to see how far they could go.''
That, he said, included seeing how far the new church could go in terms of empowering the laity, since the priest always had been in charge.
Of course, not everyone liked the changes.
``I can remember a delegation coming to me secretly, saying, `If you continue to give all of this power to lay people, I don't think we can stay in this church . . . we will have to go back to our former parish.' ''
They happened to be the more affluent members of the church, he said.
``It was so ironic - here are these people sitting in my office who have the money and what they really meant was `We've got the power, don't give it away.' ''
Those people did leave, he said.
``It was at the beginning of that parish, and it was a real setback for us but caused everybody else to pull together and make it work.''
While Masses were held in the high school or other churches in the congregation's early days, a little ranch house that Caroluzza had rented on Cedar Lane served as a gathering place for meetings and suppers.
The parish council was made up of representatives from each of 10 mini-parishes established around geographic areas of the church community.
Each division would hold meetings in homes of about 30 people to worship and conduct church business.
``Night after night I would go from house to house and ask people about their hopes and dreams for a new church, and out of that came the leadership,'' said Caroluzza, who was 39 at the time.
Those smaller neighborhood groups also helped foster Vatican II's call for more lay participation in the church and gave the Church of the Resurrection a sense of community it still holds dear today.
From the beginning, Resurrection drew people who wanted to be involved.
``The only way I can really express it is it was the most exciting church experience I'd ever had,'' said Dr. Neal Davis, who was president of the parish council then. ``I'd never been involved in anything in which I'd had such a strong feeling of community and such a strong sense of belonging.''
Newer members still quickly pick up on that feeling of community, Dutton said.
The feeling was something Dutton was searching for when she first showed up in 1990.
``A friend of mine had said you have to go there one weekend, because that's the most Baptist Catholic church I've ever seen,'' she said, laughing.
Her friend, she said, was talking about Resurrection's ``sense of community.''
``And I found that to be true,'' she said.
At that time, the church still divided members into neighborhood groups for everything from education to pastoral care, she said.
New to the area, Dutton liked the fact that through the church she quickly became a part of the community in which she lived.
When she joined, she had not attended church regularly for years. She since has gone back to school for a master's in theology and has become a pastoral associate at the church.
One of her responsibilities is the Journey groups, a newer variation of the old neighborhood groups.
``Now the communities are intentional small communities, which means you must choose to be in one,'' she said.
Instead of neighborhoods, divisions are arranged around shared needs such as working women or young mothers or young families.
The group meetings are held every other week in someone's living room and are very informal, she said.
One group meets on Friday nights and is sort of a social, with hors d'oeuvres and wine being served.
But the group discusses the Gospel readings for the next week and how that Scripture applies to things going on in their lives.
People in the groups hear about family crises and celebrations. They share a lot and get to know each other well.
That closeness spills into the churchwide atmosphere.
There are about 670 households at Church of the Resurrection, a medium-sized church by Catholic standards.
About 325 of those parishioners are on the ministry list of lay volunteers.
``There are over 40 ministry groups in the church - people organized to help make the life of the church go on,'' Dutton said.
The heavy involvement of lay people in the church's work is important, she said.
Resurrection, she said, is not a church for people who plan to attend only on Sunday.
``It is not like some kind of a filling station where you come and fill up with your holiness and leave,'' she said. ``This kind of parish requires some commitment from everyone, and there is a high degree of involvement.''
Resurrection is also known as an extremely social church.
Coffee and doughnuts are served after Sunday morning Mass, so people don't get in their cars and go home but stay and catch up on each others' lives.
The members hold receptions after almost every event, including funerals.
``They do like to party,'' mused the Rev. James Carr, the current pastor. ``I think they realize that the community is the core of the church, so when something is going on they don't just go in, say their prayers and leave.
``They hang around and tell stories. They talk and get in touch with people.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photos by MARK MITCHELL
[Color cover photo]
The Rev. James Carr, at left, current pastor of Resurrection, says
community is the core of the church. Susanne Dutton, right, the
pastoral associate, compares it to the early church where the people
were the saints.
The church at left is the dream come true for the Rev. Thomas J.
Caroluzza, far right in the file photo at right, which was taken in
1971. He was a founder of the church that reflected the changes
instituted by Vatican II. With him were Father Rick and Sister Mary.
Until the building was constructed, Mass was celebrated at Green
Acres Presbyterian Church. by CNB