Growing the flock

<p>It's the first thing that strikes you when you walk through the wooden doors of Resurrection Church — is this a Catholic church?</p><p>Where are the musty wooden pews, the long, vaulting nave and decorative chandeliers? What about the ornate wood-carved or stone-chiseled pulpit?</p><p>Instead, hundreds of Catholic parishioners sit in upholstered metal chairs set up for the service in sections that fan out from the chancel in a wide-open space. They sit, stand, kneel and pray as a large group within sight of each other, in contrast to the rows of pews in a more traditional chapel or cathedral.</p><p>This is where some 3,000 Catholics pray during five Sunday services, two in English and three in Spanish. During the Christmas holiday, the 600-seat capacity church fills quickly, especially during Spanish-language services, a reflection of the growing importance of Latinos to the local Catholic Church.</p><p>Resurrection's appeal, parishioners say, is an unmatched sense of community that is both humble and accepting.</p><p>“It didn't take too long to get used to,” said Joan Gatley, a Resurrection parishioner since 1976 when she and her family moved up from Southern California. “It was such a welcoming community. We just felt at home immediately,” she said.</p><p>After four decades serving as the southwest Santa Rosa parish for the local Catholic Diocese, Resurrection, with its design as a multipurpose community center continues to create a worship experience that in some ways defies the traditional solemn atmosphere of Catholic Mass.</p><h3>Sixties roots</h3> <p>Founded in 1967, the parish on Stony Point Road was born at a time of global upheaval and dramatic social change. Its first pastor helped establish a parish structure that shared authority and gave leity more control over the church.</p><p>Resurrection's growth is owed largely to the surge in the local Latino population, as well as the loyalty of the parish's largely older white population. The parish's growth mirrors what is happening to the Catholic Church across the diocese and the country, as it struggles to overcome the loss of non-Latino congregations and contributions.</p><p>It's a trend that is shared by mainline Protestant churchs, which locally continue to lose ground to evangelical Protestant churches. Some traditional denominations in Santa Rosa have spun off more contemporary services dominated by music and a more casual atomosphere.</p><p>And some local congregations have increased their Spanish-language services. The evangelical Santa Rosa Alliance Church, for example, this year combined its English and Spanish Sunday sermons.</p><p>It's all part of the evolution of faith in the North Coast.</p><p>The Catholic Church is the largest denomination in the North Coast, and the diocese of Santa Rosa claims 150,000 faithful in Sonoma, Napa, Mendocino, Lake counties. An estimated 3,000 attend Sunday services at Resurrection, one of 42 parishes in the Santa Rosa Diocese. Three of the five Sunday Masses are in Spanish.</p><h3>Influx of Latinos</h3> <p>In the United States, Latinos have contributed 71 percent of the growth of the Catholic Church. A study released this year by Trinity College showed that between 1990 and 2008, the influx of 9 million Latino Catholics made up the bulk of the 11 million new Catholics in the country. In 2008, Latinos were 32 percent of U.S. Catholics, compared to 20 percent in 1990.</p><p>Even so, while Resurrection's English-speaking congregation has declined in numbers, Sunday service for native English speakers still thrives.</p><p>At a recent Mass hymn, David Hidalgo, 34, who has been part of the church choir since he was 13, kept a steady beat on a bodhrán, an Irish drum popular in Celtic music.</p><p>During the Rite of Peace, when parishioners offer each other handshakes, some took full advantage of the church's design. Many stood up from their seats and walked from one wing to the next, criss-crossing the wide open space. Some searched for a particular church member they knew, whether it was someone they missed seeing the week before or someone who they knew was ill.</p><p>“It's just an instinct to reach out and touch,” Gatley said. “I cannot imagine being home on a Sunday or to begin a Monday without the food that this hour feeds my soul for the week.”</p><p>Part of that sustenance is provided by Father David Shaw, who one church official said has a knack for mixing the sublime with the ridiculous, and Father José González, who heads the Spanish-speaking congregation.</p><p>Many credit Shaw for Resurrection's atmosphere of inclusiveness. But Shaw himself said that feeling was already there when he arrived 21 years ago.</p><p>“Jerry Cox started it that way,” he said. “The warmth really has to do with the people who just feel comfortable in this space and are welcoming of one another.</p><h3>Spiritual architect</h3> <p>Shaw was referring to then-Father Gerald Cox, in many ways the spiritual architect behind Resurrection, who came to Santa Rosa in 1962, six years before Resurrection's dedication on June 30, 1968.</p><p>Cox, who was ordained more than a decade earlier in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, spent five years working in a Latino and African-American neighborhood in Oakland. It was trial by fire, said Cox, recalling the laughter that came from the pews when he referred to the Pope in the feminine.</p><p>“I was talking about ‘Santa Papa' and ‘la Santisima Papa,' and I noticed everyone was laughing like hell,” said Cox, who left the priesthood in 1972 and a year later married former nun Kathleen Snyder, who he worked with at Resurrection. He had recieved a Vatican dispensation that allowed him to get married by the church.</p><p>Cox, who now lives in the Anderson Valley, said that when he first came to Santa Rosa he “wound up” chancellor of the new diocese and was living in the rectory of the newly designed St. Eugene's Cathedral on Montgomery Drive in east Santa Rosa.</p><p>St. Eugene's, which has more than 1,700 registered parishioner households and a school for more than 400 preschool through eighth-grade students, remains the headquarters for the Diocese of Santa Rosa.</p><p>But it wasn't a good fit for the non-conformist Cox.</p><p>St. Eugene's catered to the growth of the middle and upper-middle class in Santa Rosa after World War II, he said. The old Catholic center was St. Rose, with many Italian and Portuguese members. The west side of town, which was largely Italian, was the domain of St. Rose.</p><p>When he got here, Cox starting asking a question that was ahead of its time: What were the centers of the Mexican community? That question eventually brought the priest in contact with Santa Rosa's future Latino activists, whom he helped groom into leadership positions. They included George Ortiz, who founded the organization that would later become the California Human Devlepment Corp., and Candido, whose longtime activism in the immigrant community led to a job with the Mexican government overseeing the needs of Mexican nationals living in the United States.</p><p>As west Santa Rosa continued to grow, then Bishop Leo Maher asked Cox to “take a church out there.” Catholics west of Highway 12 attended either St. Rose or St. Sebastian Church in Sebastopol. Cox, who had always been interested in modern architecture, took on the task of building a new church and worked closely with Santa Rosa architect Thomas Fruiht.</p><h3>Versatile building</h3> <p>The price tag of just under $250,000 made Maher more amenable to Resurrection's unconventional design, said Cox. The multipurpose structure was designed to be a church, schoolhouse, and community gathering place for both Catholics and non-Catholics.</p><p>“All the altars, pulpits were on casters. All the seating was movable,” Cox said, recalling the comments made by a parishioner who was helping set up for a evening event the day after Mass. “He said, ‘Jeez father, we can go from a church to a nightclub in 15 minutes.'”</p><p>When Resurrection was built, the growth of the Latino community in west Santa Rosa was still years away. But it became evident shortly after Father Shaw arrived at the church 21 years ago.</p><p>A local Spanish-language radio station approached Shaw and asked if they could broadcast the 12:30 p.m. Spanish-language Sunday Mass.</p><p>Shaw agreed, and in the weeks that followed, the number of people who attended the Spanish-language service doubled. Since then, the church has added two more Spanish-language services on Sundays, 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. There's also a 7 p.m. Vietnamese service on Saturday.</p><p>Prior to arriving at Resurrection, Shaw spent a few years working in the bishop's office of the Santa Rosa Diocese. Before that, he worked in Catholic schools, first as a religion teacher at St. Vincent High School in Petaluma and then as principal of St. Bernard High School in Eureka.</p><h3>Feast celebrated at fairgrounds</h3> <p>Last week, Resurrection, in conjunction with St. Rose and St. Sebastian parishes, organized an event at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds in celebration of the Dec. 12 Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.</p><p>The event, which Resurrection officials said drew about 3,000 people, was organized because the southwest Santa Rosa parish can no longer accommodate the thousands that turn out for the popular religious celebration. Last year, a woman passed out during the Dec. 12 Mass at Resurrection, which was flooded by well over 1,000 Latino Catholics. The church has a capacity of 600.</p><p>“A lady collapsed, and the fire department couldn't get in the parking lot, they couldn't get in the church,” Shaw said.</p><p>Earlier this week, 42-year-old Clara Salmeron of Santa Rosa accompanied her niece Deisy Hernandez, 26, and her fiance, Julio Cesar Moyado, 29, to the church office, a small building situated just east of the main church structure. Hernandez and Moyado were meeting with Father Jose Gonzalez to discuss their planned March 26 marriage.</p><p>When Hernandez met Moyado, she lived with Salmeron on King Street near College Avenue. Salmeron said that while her neighborhood parish is St. Rose, she feels more at home at Resurrection, where she's been many years.</p><p>“I just like the way (Father Gonzalez) preaches,” said Salmeron, who was married at Resurrection on July10. “He speaks clearly and genuinely.”</p><p>Hernandez and Moyado said their reception will be at the Druids Hall on College Avenue, but the wedding must be at Resurrection because its their church.</p><p>Resurrection's official count of “registered families” is 1,182, though many Latinos do not register.</p><p>Father Shaw has a tall order for the future of Resurrection, one that depends on the ability of the diocese to recruit and sustain members.</p><p>“I know that the next pastor has to be bilingual, bicultural,” he said.</p><p>You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com.</p>