Christkindlmarkt

The Dayton Liederkranz-Turner Christkindlmarkt will offer a centuries old German Christmas Market tradition that originated in Nuremberg, Germany on Dec. 9-11.  The public is invited, with free admission and free parking.  There will also be a Christmas Concert that Saturday from 8-9 pm (when the booths will be closed).  For more information call 937-223-9013 or click into DaytonGermanClub.org.

The director and editors of Mary Page under the auspices of the International Marian Research Institute do not necessarily endorse or agree with the events and ideas expressed in this feature. Our sole purpose is to report on items about Mary gleaned from a myriad of papers representing the secular press.

Shrine Offers Tranquility amid Tumult
[Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri), September 20, 2005]

Zooming east on Interstate 70, approaching the bustling intersection at Mid Rivers Mall Drive, you might notice the Virgin Mary and the child Jesus watching over you.

The Mary and Jesus statue is the centerpiece of the Our Lady of the Way Shrine, nestled in front of a duck pond and between the interstate and Suemandy Road.

The rush of nearby semis and cars doesn't exactly make for a quiet scene. But some passers-by find serenity by sitting on one of the three stone benches facing the shrine. The statue is nestled in an alcove in a stone structure, flanked by stone vases of colorful, artificial flowers.

"Our Lady of the Way is the patroness of all who travel along the roads of this world and of the seven seas," says a plaque shaped like an open book below the statue.

Another plaque gives clues to the shrine's origins. It lists the 11 charter members of the Society of Our Lady of the Way, including Ralph Borgmeyer, who founded the society in the 1950s, after talking to a church member who had just returned from Europe.

The member talked about roadside shrines, which were common in Europe, and said that he thought that the lack of shrines in America indicated that it wasn't a very Christian country.

"I knew that it wasn't true, so I got this idea," Borgmeyer said in a 1982 interview with the Post-Dispatch. Borgmeyer died later that year.

Borgmeyer's idea gained momentum when his young son, Bill, died of a bite from a black widow spider. The elder Borgmeyer decided that he wanted to build the shrine in memory of his son.

So he and other volunteers built the shrine on a hillside surrounded by woods, near the intersection of Highway 79 and Interstate 70. Travelers used it as a spot to stop and pray, and wedding parties posed there for pictures. The shrine remained for nearly 28 years, until May 1985, when it was razed to make way for an improved highway interchange.

St. Peters Alderman Len Pagano and the 46 members of the society campaigned to find the shrine a new home. The May Co. donated land along Suemandy, and the new shrine was dedicated in November 1987.

Don Ziegemeier, 68, who lives just a couple of blocks from the shrine, has been president of the society for at least 35 years. Tom Pallardy of St. Charles serves as secretary and treasurer. They are the society's only members now and have watched over the shrine for several years.

Money that the state gave the society for the land at the old shrine still pays the electric bill to light it at night. This fall, Ziegemeier would like to plant new bushes at the site and repaint the statue.

He worries about who will watch over the shrine when he and Pallardy cannot, and they would like an organization to take over the responsibility of maintaining it.

Ziegemeier still sees cars parked on the shrine's small lot and still spots people sitting on the benches, facing the statue.

He doesn't know if these people are Catholic, or if they have a particular devotion to Mary, or if they are travelers who have never seen such a shrine before. "I think sometimes people like to get away from the hustle and bustle and just sit there and meditate," he said. "We could use more of that."

Still Sacred: Parishes Close But Symbols of Faith Endure
[Source: The Boston Globe, September 18, 2005]

In the end, it took three men and a pickup truck to move the 700-pound Virgin Mary statue from a grotto outside the closed St. Peter Church in East Gloucester, down the road to St. Anthony by the Sea Chapel.

After loosening the concrete statue from its base, two men jumped in the front seat while a third rode in the back next to the prone figure of the nearly 6-foot-tall Mary, as the gray pickup wound its way to the little stone chapel.

"We almost died moving it," said Joe Parisi, 44, the driver. "She was a lot heavier than we thought. When we finally got her into place, it was the happiest moment of our lives."

The all-white Virgin Mary is one of dozens of displaced religious items including crucifixes, crosses, altars, and stained glass windows that have found new homes at Catholic schools, chapels, and churches in the year since the first of eight local parishes locked its doors.

While the destruction of a Christ figure outside a closed church in Gloucester riled that seaside city, most of the items have been handled with care as they traveled down the road, or as far away as South America.

The Archdiocese of Boston, which has closed 62 parishes in the past year, helped disperse the religious items left behind. But faithful parishioners often didn't wait for the moving van. With a lot of muscle and heart, they literally took their most sacred objects and symbols into their own hands.

They hoisted statues and crucifixes weighing hundreds of pounds into pickup trucks. They bundled crosses and candlesticks in bubble wrap, either to keep them safe or to ship them to a foreign land. They carried favorite saints, like the statue of St. Rocco at St. Peter Parish in Malden, out the front door after closing Mass.

And at St. Alphonsus, a church on the Beverly-Danvers line, they packed altar linens, vestments, and stations of the cross into suitcases and delivered them to San Alfonso, a church built in its name in the Dominican Republic.

The Rev. Harvey Egan, a theology professor at Boston College, said the emotional response is not surprising.

"If you are a Catholic, symbols, like statues, are extremely important," he said. "They are the way our faith is expressed and made concrete."

Egan said it is natural for Catholics to want to save a little piece of their lost parish.

"We get attached to the homes we grow up in," Egan said. "And the same is true for a church. People get attached to their religious environment. And when that is threatened, or altered in any way, that hits people very hard."

And that could be why many made sure their parish treasures found good homes. At St. James Church in Salem, a 17-foot-tall crucifix from nearby St. Joseph Parish is mounted on a wall, to the right of the altar.

Chapels at St. Mary's Regional High School in Lynn and Malden Catholic High School have tabernacles from Our Lady of Lourdes in Revere and St. Peter Church in Malden, respectively. Malden Catholic also has the altar and stations of the cross from St. Peter, as well as a statue of Mary, which stands outside the campus ministry office.

A stained glass window of Mary above the altar at Our Lady of Lourdes is waiting to be installed at Immaculate Conception Church in Revere. A baptismal font and a crucifix from St. Alphonsus Church are at St. Mary of the Assumption Parish in Danvers.

In Salem, a former parishioner from St. Joseph paid to ship the stations of the cross and a statue of the Holy Family to a mission church in South America.

In the Dominican Republic, the new San Alfonso Church is filled with the most sacred items from St. Alphonsus, including the original crucifix, a plaster statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and original artwork from the church. A cross that hung above the main altar at Sacred Heart Church in Gloucester now graces Our Lady of the Pillar in Cevicos, another rural Dominican village. Our Lady of the Pillar is the sister church of Holy Family, a new parish in Gloucester created from the merger of Sacred Heart and three other parishes.

The archdiocese developed guidelines to disperse religious goods. Church law says they must be removed before a church building can be sold. First dibs go to a parish designated to receive people from the church that is closing. They're encouraged to take a statue, cross, or other familiar symbol to make newcomers feel at home.

After two weeks, other parishes and Catholic institutions in the archdiocese can choose. Anything left unclaimed is made available on a password-protected website, to be given away to other Catholic churches, schools, or organizations. Church law does not allow sacred items to be sold, the archdiocese said.

"Our interest is to make sure that these items stay in use," said Terrence C. Donilon, the archdiocese spokesman. "We're working with parishes both in and outside the diocese to make sure that happens."

At St. James in Salem, the giant wooden crucifix from St. Joseph was put in a place where parishioners could easily see and touch it. "This is a symbol of our healing," said the Rev. John Sheridan, pastor at St. James, standing in front of the crucifix. "We put upon him our own wounds. ... But it also reminds us that what we share together is Christ's presence, in and around us."

Moving the 1,000-pound crucifix, which bears a 6-foot figure of a wounded Jesus, happened almost by accident. As clergy from other Salem parishes looked over religious items at St. Joseph, Andrea Lausier, a pastoral associate, wondered aloud what would happen to the crucifix suspended over the main altar.

"I said, 'I wish we could take it with us,' " recalled Lausier, now a pastoral associate at St. James. "I thought it would mean a lot to the people of St. Joe's, to see our crucifix in our new parish."

Parishioners swung into action. Within hours, the giant fixture was in the back of a pickup, traveling across downtown Salem in midday. Onlookers stared, pointed, and a few even blessed themselves. "It's not something you see every day, thank God," Lausier said, laughing. "It was emotional for everyone involved."

In East Gloucester, the Virgin Mary's journey was equally moving.

Just two days earlier, parishioners had been shocked when a worker hired by the archdiocese used a jackhammer to destroy a beloved Sacred Heart of Jesus statue that had stood in front of the Sacred Heart Church in Lanesville an action for which the archdiocese later apologized.

Some feared that the Mary statue from St. Peter could meet the same fate. The statue was sacred to women at the parish, who prayed the rosary to her each October. Parishioners decided from the start that Mary would move to St. Anthony by the Sea, the parish chapel that did not close.

A concrete foundation was poured in early summer. But by mid-July, Mary still had not appeared. Not until three men and a pickup came along one Saturday morning to retrieve her.

"We got sent on a mission of mercy," Parisi said. "It was important that Mary be saved."

Our Lady of Miracles of Mussomeli
[Source: The Buffalo News (New York), September 12, 2005]

Bishop Edward U. Kmiec, left, greets worshippers attending the 75th annual Feast of Our Lady of Miracles of Mussomeli Sunday in St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church in downtown Buffalo. Commemorating the healing of a paralytic in the Sicilian village of Mussomeli in 1530 by intercession of the Virgin Mary, the feast was brought here by immigrants from Mussomeli and is largest annual Italian-American religious celebration in the area.

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