PROFILE OF PASTOR
The following article summarizes the philosophy behind the series Margins and Options as well as
the philosophy of the program's creator. It was published in Notre Dame Magazine in Summer
1994. It was written by Kerry Temple, managing editor of the Magazine. Our thanks to both Kerry
Temple and Notre Dame Magazine for permission to reprint the article.
"Go get my little Jesus" says Mabel Vilcan from her wheelchair. She is flanked by more
than a dozen friends and family members -- mostly white-haired, mostly women, all
jammed into the kitchen of her small frame house on the Chitimacha Indian Reservation
in the swamplands of south Louisiana. Someone retrieves a small plastic statuette of
Jesus from her bedroom and places it upon a wooden table -- now the focal point of her
kitchen -- next to candles and a cross and a small glass of water holding a bouquet of red
flowers. Silence descends; all eyes are on the makeshift altar. It is time for Mass.
On this blustery November morning in the mossy lowlands along Bayou Teche, Father
Bill Crumley '59, C.S.C., draped in a green chasuble, breaks open the book, sets it down,
folds his hands and begins again the solemn ceremony which has engraced and united
Catholics for almost 2000 years. "Let us pray."
This offering of bread and wine, celebrated today between refrigerator and breakfast bar
in a room adorned with family photos, calendars and framed icons of American Indians,
traces its ancestry to the Last Supper. The ritual has been performed in a multitude of
settings -- by early Christians in the catacombs, by popes and cardinals in resplendent
basilicas, by monks and missionaries in hospitals and on battlefields. "Do this," Jesus
said, "in memory of me."
Crumley, the sole priest at Immaculate Conception Parish in tiny Charenton, Louisiana,
celebrates the Eucharist seven days a week, although the weekday services are often
attended by only three or four worshipers scattered singly among the rows of wooden
pews. Each Monday he says Mass in the home of a parishoner, as he is doing today,
reciting the Lord's Prayer while Tom and Ann and Mabel Vilcan, Odette Hebert, Coralie
Latino, Helen Mora, Shirley and Hazel Bernard, Clara Guillot and the others clasp hands
and reverently bow their heads.
"The thing that drew me to the priesthood," Crumley says later, "and the thing that keeps
me, is the Eucharist -- to have a chance every day to say the eucharist and have people
come."
As a boy growing up in Gary, Indiana, Bill Crumley was intrigued with the mystery of the
sacrament. "When I was a kid and the Mass was in Latin, I knew all of the prayers," he
says, "even the ones the priest said. And I knew what they meant. It just appealed to me.
There was just a sense of mystery. As a kid, I was taken by that sense of mystery.
"As an adult," adds the 58-year-old priest, "I sense the mystery less, but the Eucharist is
still the one thing the Lord gave us as a remembrance of him. As one of his last acts, he
said, 'I'll be present whenever you do this.'"
During the mass this morning in Mabel Vilcan's kitchen -- a ceremony both intimate and
relaxed -- Crumley preaches on the theme of faith and friendship, shuffles about the the
crowded room offering embraces and kind words during the Sign of Peace, consecrates
the bread and wine and distributes Communion. Later he explains, "It isn't just the
mystery; it's the simplicity of it. And the Gospels seem so sensible, so simple. Even as a
kid I could see myself doing the work Christ did."
After graduating from Emerson High School in 1954, Crumley entered Notre Dame and
was graduated in 1959. Five years later he was ordained a priest of the Congregation of
Holy Cross. His vows brought him into a 2000-year-old tradition of standing alter christus,
in the place of Christ. That, in essence, is Bill Crumley's life.
His playing out of the Gospel message has not always made him popular with power
brokers, other clerics, or even some of his own parishioners. "I've been told many times
that I'm not like other priests," he says. "But what I've done is what I thought I vowed to
do. And I think even people who dislike me respect me."
Crumley's squabbles with church officialdom and his confrontations with the status quo
have earned him a reputation as a rebel. "I don't see myself as a rebel, a maverick or a
renegade," he says, "but others do. Basically it's because I ask questions that challenge
the way things are. I'm not afraid to speak out if I see injustice or something wrong."
After doing parish work in South Bend in the late '60s, Crumley headed to Lafayette,
Louisiana, where he was associate pastor of Holy Cross Church for four years and pastor
for six. In the late 1970's he set out in a new direction. He became something of an
itinerant priest and spent the next dozen years doing social ministry: organizing a
statewide Nader-like citizens' group to combat climbing utility rates; building two solar
houses; and assisting at various rural parishes in three catholic dioceses in south
Louisiana.
"Throughout my life," he says, "I've tried to live justly. I've tried to live simply. I've tried
to be present to people in need. I think that's the most important thing I have done. I have
been a witness. I know that's a trite term, but I do try to live simply and compassionately.
That's why I say the most important thing I do is witness. I've had people tell me, "you
don't preach the Gospel. You live it.' "
In February, 1989, Crumley became pastor of Immaculate Conception Parish in
Charenton, a hideaway village of a thousand souls on the other side of the levee from the
Atchafalaya Basin, the 'gator-infested heart of Louisiana's swamp country. Initially known
to French immigrants as Anse Auxsavage (Indian Bend) because of the Chitimacha
village there, the settlement was later named "Charenton" -- according to local legend,
after a renowned French insane asylum on the theory that anyone choosing to live there
had to be crazy.
In early 1844 a letter signed by 44 townspeople asked the bishop of New Orleans to send
a priest. But before a pastor came to stay, a missionary priest arrived, baptized three
children and moved on. His name was Stephen T. Badin, the same priest who secured
the land upon which Notre Dame stands and whose name identifies the residence hall in
which Bill Crumley served as chaplain in the late 1960s.
Formally established in September 1844, Immaculate Conception Parish has been served
by a long succession of priests, including Monsignor R.J. Gobeil, whose exploits
ministering by boat to the Acadian swampers in the 1940s warranted a small book.
Crumley's assignment thereby enlisted him in a company of men who have served the
rural parish with independence and individuality. Like them, Crumley is a straight-
shooter, a roughewn priest decidedly more intent in things than their appearance.
Down-to-earth, unaffected, real -- such are the words Crumley brings to the visitor's mind.
His hair is long, his beard a little ragged. He favors baggy sweaters and bicycles and a
rattly pickup truck, unless he's on foot. He gets around, stops by, pays visits -- his casual
excursions around Charenton earned him acceptance, then welcome, from the diverse
elements of the town's society: the store owner, the postal worker, the teachers at the
reservation school, non-Catholics and black Southern Baptists, Cajun fishermen who
haven't been inside a church in years.
"When I meet people, I introduce myself as Bill Crumley and sometimes it doesn't come
up that I'm a priest," he says. "I've had many people let down and tell me some very
deep stuff about their lives, the kind of things they should be telling a priest. But I have
found just the opposite to be true. Often, when they find out who I am, they say, 'Gee, I
never would have told you all that if I had known you were a priest.'"
Despite the changes he brought to the parish ("altar girls," for example), some of which
had the flock twittering, Crumley easily fit in with the country people, the blacks, the
Native Americans he came to serve. His enthusiasm for local history and his desire to
preserve the local culture soon made him a mover in community affairs. He now hosts a
television program on the local public access channel; he has been a leader in promoting
Charenton's rich heritage; and when Hurricane Andrew swept through town in August
1992, Crumley and his pick up were right there in its wake, moving and hauling, getting
the work done.
"I think he's really a priest," says 22-year-old Robert Vilcan, a tribal policeman. 'he really
believes in what he's doing, and I respect him for that. This guy, he will give you his bike,
he will give you his shirt. He's a common person, one of us. I mean, the guy doesn't even
have cable TV."
Crumley lives alone in a small brick house adjacent to the steepled church. It is spare but
comfortable. In the kitchen is a bare-limbed tree decorated Christmas-style with photos,
cards and notes from friends and family. Out back is a greenhouse the priest fashioned
out of discarded iron pipes, rusted-out washing machines and windows retrieved from
garbage dumps and garage sales. The greenhouse keeps Crumley in flowers and
vegetables virtually year-round.
Beyond his backyard is the cemetery. As is the custom in flood-plain south Louisiana, the
tombs are above ground. The ancient graveyard of concrete vaults and stone slabs is
dominated by a hovering life-size crucifix.
The largely Cajun culture is traditionally Catholic, and Crumley estimates that 70 percent
of the town's 1,000 residents are Catholic. About 500 are on the parish rolls; about 200, he
estimates, attend Mass on a given Sunday. Many of these, he says, "rotate through,"
attending Mass in other parishes or sometimes skipping church altogether. Many of them
have become relaxed about their weekly obligation and their affiliation to a particular
parish.
Immaculate Conception, like countless other churches, is an "older" parish, with most of
its "regulars," its core of believers, past their middle years. There are families -- like the
Vilcans and the Dardens and the Dapremonts -- for whom the church is a generational
experience. But, says Crumley, "you don't see a lot of young people. They're not the
ones who come every week."
While some observers are apprehensive about the future of an aging church served by
an aging and shrinking clergy, Crumley is not one of them. "I don't see the death knell of
the church," he says, "I see a lot of life going on. It's just that much of it is outside the
structure of the church."
"I see a lot of people doing really good Christian work," he explains. "They have a good
sense for what the Gospels are about, and they are caring for people, and they want their
children baptized in the faith. They themselves may not be what we call active in the
church. Many actually feel alienated from the church for various reasons. We just need to
find ways to get that energy, that faith, back into the church. We're not going to have the
Knights of Columbus or Holy Name societies like before, but right now we're not offering
alternatives.
"But I find that people really are caring for others," he reiterates, "nursing the sick, taking
care of the poor and the needy, and seeing it as a religious thing. But it's almost as if they
see it as something they do not because of the church, but almost in spite of it. That's
one reason I'm not concerned about people going to Mass; They're doing good things and
for religious reasons -- it's just outside the structure of the church. What we need to do is
restructure the church.
One way to do that, Crumley believes, would be to implement the Latin American model
of "base communities" in which a single priest would be responsible for three or four
"missions" gathered into one collective. This scheme, which may soon be necessitated
by declining vocations, would rely heavily upon`lay participation -- perhaps even a
salaried layperson instead of a clergyman to manage parish affairs. As an alternative to
shutting down churches, this arrangement would preserve a sense of community and
protect the parish structure necessary for retreats, CCD classes, and liturgical continuity.
It's possible, says Crumley, for a single priest to handle the tasks presented by such a
structure. His own daily routine allows time for visiting parishioners, writing (he has
published several books of prayer, poetry and fiction) and working in his greenhouse, on
his TV program and on community projects. But he admits the parish priest's life is
pleasantly paced -- despite its unexpected crises and demands.
"My philosophy," he says, "is that there are moments of grace, and probably 90 to 95
percent of the good I do, I do in those times." Grace, the priest elaborates, is "a gift from
God, a free offering that enriches our lives." It may come unexpectedly, without anything
done to earn it. "The Lord is always offering it," he says, "and we can be aware of it or
not." Times of sickness and death, he says, can be moments of grace, and he tries then
to help parishioners be open to "the Lord's gift of grace."
"I think most everyone in the parish has been touched in some way by my ministry," he
adds. "So whatever else they may think of me, after that they will say, "He was there
when I needed help.'"
Similar opportunities for ministry exist, says Crumley, during "the major seasons, such
as Advent and Christmas, Lent and Easter. Or sickness and death in the family. Or
weddings, baptisms, and first Communions. Some people you don't see except on these
occasions, and it's then that people are most open to the message of the Lord and to the
Word. Grace comes most fully during these unique moments when people are most open
to the Gospel of the Lord."
Parish retreats also draw pretty well, he adds, and last Christmas about 50 people joined
him to sing carols to the shut-ins. A Passover meal in Holy Week went over well, and so
did a Stations-of-the-Cross procession through the streets of Charenton. Each Christmas
the priest decorates his house and invites young people in to discuss ways in which
Christ comes to them in their lives.
"I hear a lot of Confessions," Crumley continues, "but it's usually people just sitting and
talking with me. I am there in the church to hear Confessions before Mass," he adds, "but
sometimes no one comes in and sometimes three or four do so, most elderly." So he
offers an extended penitential service at the beginning of Mass as a rite of reconciliation,
and sometimes an anointing of the sick during weekend Masses. "Basically it's an older
parish," he repeats, "and anointing the sick is very successful. The emphasis is more and
more on sickness and healing."
Then there is the religious education program for the parish young people -- the 90
percent of first-through twelfth-graders who do not attend the Catholic schools in nearby
Franklin. Regena Frederick has directed and taught in the program for more than 20
years. She is a Eucharistic minister who has welcomed such changes as the English
Mass and receiving Communion in the hand, but she finds course materials deficient.
"There are not enough basics," she complains.
"The Baltimore Catechism had the basics," The result, say many observers, is a younger
generation with little grasp of the fundamental tenets of their faith.
Now, preparing a wriggling circle of second-graders for their First Communion, Frederick
refers to the picture-book, Alive in Jesus, to instill lessons about "Jesus teaching us to
care, to respect things."
While traditional Catholic teaching was rigid, definite, and long on stone-engraved
doctrine, today's pedagogy is squishier, its concepts vaguer and more abstract. "What is
sin?" she asks. "What does sin mean?" The novices remain squirmily silent. "Sin is
saying no to Jesus's way of living," Frederick says. "It is turning away from a chance to
love Jesus."
The classes are fairly well attended. "It's just hard to get things to where they keep
going," says Frederick of the education program and other parish projects. "It's mostly
the older people involved. Sometimes you get a few of the younger ones involved, but
nowadays it's hard for the young ones. Both parents have to work, and when they get
home they have the children. But if the young ones don't get involved ,,,."
Part of Crumley's mission, of course, is keeping the parish active and vital, getting
everyone to pitch in. "I like having a small parish," he adds, "because there is a real
sense of community." Although the priest says he isn't sure exactly how that fellowship
develops, he knows it when it happens: "In each parish there is a core group of people
who want something deeper. They usually look to get something from me. I try to get
them to see what they can give to each other. Then they will learn not just to turn to the
Lord but to the community."
It is this element --the communal quality -- that is cited by the active core as the most
important aspect of parish life. "When you're in a parish, you're in a family -- the family of
God," says Justice of the Peace Edna Delhaye, whose family came to Charenton in 1851.
"When we're all sittin' together at Mass and we pray at Mass, we pray together and we
stay together. It brings a greater love for God and a greater love for the other members."
The sense of community, says Rita Darden, provides support for individuals in need. "It's
a whole group of people," this grandmother explains, "where one person props up the
other. If someone falters or falls, you shore him up and bring him into the fold."
It was Rita's husband, Dan, who is credited with having brought Crumley to Charenton in
1989. Darden was tribal chief at the time and, he says, "Father Bill was his own person,
living in an A-frame house and riding his bicycle to Lafayette. Not everyone at
Immaculate Conception Parish applauded the new recruit. "When Father got here,"
Darden recalls, "he upset the whole thing. Now people realize he's not so bad. Father Bill
is not prejudiced at all. He likes Indians and he likes blacks. The previous priests only
liked the elites. But Father Bill wanted to do things with the whole community, get the
whole communbity involved. He got us all participating together."
The changes Crumley brought to the tradition-bound parish rankled some members of
the congregation. The modernization seemed radical to this enclave of Roman
Catholicism. Some grumbled; some left; some stayed -- embracing the changes.
Mary Ann Vilcan, a peppery Cajun woman with silver hair and lively blue eyes, says
Crumley was "like a mule" -- steadily patient but unyieldingly persistent -- in getting the
rural Southern parish to cope with the changes the church has been adapting to
nationally for decades. "When Father Bill came in and started reforming things," Vilcan
recalls, "some people wanted it all to remain stagnant. But life does not remain still.
People need to change. The Vatican is always improving. It was time to get on the bus."
Others disagreed. Marie St. Blanc, a spirited woman indelibly molded by Catholic
education and upbringing, was upset by changes that overturned decades of religious
practice. Yet despite her quarrels with the changes and the changer, her life-long loyalty
and devotion to the church coaxed her into continuing secretarial duties for Crumley and
the parish. "All of it irks me." she explains. "But that's the way it is. A parish is the pastor."
But I still say 'Holy Ghost,'" she adds.
Despite her deference to institutional authority, St. Blanc, in her rapid-fire Cajun accent,
can reel off her gripes. "I don't like the women Eucharistic ministers and I don't approve
of the altar girls. And now women want to be priests. That's ridiculous, huh? The
changes? To me, it's awful."
Instead of the Altar Society, he's talkin' about Greenpeace or somethin' to do with the
environment. He'd rather be sayin' mass out under a tree, and he makes people stand
around the altar, and one time did a healing with turkey feathers. And he'll put on plays
an' stuff during Mass with so many people runnin' around the altar. But you know what
really kills me is when they clap in church. I shrink. I just wanna fall through the floor-
boards."
Like St. Blanc, many Catholics , accustomed to well-established rules and rituals, are
uncomfortable with freestyle ceremonies and less rigid teachings. "I blame it all on the
bishops," the former Catholic-school teacher says of her discontent. "Some of them are
so goofy. I'm hopin' the Pope's new catechism will straighten 'em all out. When I first
came to Charenton, I could answer everyone's questions on religion. I can't do that
anymore."
She pauses, then adds, "To me, it's the reverence. Going to Communion now, with all the
changes, I just don't feel as holy. The reverence is something that's missing. I miss the
benediction and I miss the prayers at the foot of the altar. The ceremonies were so
gorgeous, and the music … now I go crazy. A lot of young people, after the finish school,
they leave -- and very few come back to our little parish here."
At Immaculate Conception, as at many parishes, rural and urban, attrition is common.
"There are two major reasons for people leaving the church," says Crumley. "One is that
-- for some reason, often divorce -- they can't get married in the church or can't receive
the sacraments. The other reason is the changes, Some people left because there were
too many changes, other people left because there haven't been enough."
Since 1973, Crumley points out, the parish has had a mere 10 per cent drop in baptisms.
"That's amazing," he notes, given the population reduction and the number of people not
coming to church. " Still, he admits, "a number of people left here about the time I came
here -- mostly before, and mostly because things were so dead. But another thing in this
area," he adds, "was pedophilia."
Just prior to Crumley's arrival, the pastor of a neighboring parish was discharged for
molesting children. "Most Indians out here were Catholics from the get-go," says Tribal
Policeman Vilcan. "But when the molestations happened in this area and other parts of
Louisiana within hearing range, a lot went over to the Baptist church. The last couple of
decades, that's why a lotta people left the Catholic Church."
Crumley acknowledges that suspicion of the celibate priesthood and accompanying lay
concerns, such as homosexuality and pedophilia, have affected relationships between
pastor and parishioners. Perhaps a more crucial problem yet, he contends is a question
of authority -- a clergy and an institutional hierarchy -- "out of touch with the people."
Too often the issues that concern ecclesiastics are not those affecting the people in the
routine of their lives, as he sees it; those issues that do weigh heavily upon Catholics on
a daily basis are not dealt with satisfactorily by ranking church officials. It is comparable,
Crumley admits, to the generals being too distant from the troops.
This philosophical gulf can be traced to the Second Vatican Council, which loosened the
more restrictive church teachings and practices. As a result, American Catholics
assumed greater independence from institutional formulae, becoming more autonomous
and less docile. Subsequent decisions, such as the church's position on birth control and
the Pill, eroded ecclesiastical authority further, prompting Catholics to choose for
themselves those rules they would obey, those teachings they would accept.
As the American church (from devout layperson to militant nun to radical priest to
conservative bishop) became increasingly diverse and democratic, Catholics questioned
more vocally the church's stands on a provocative array of issues -- abortion and birth
control, women's status, homosexuality,and clerical celibacy, and pedophilia among
clergy. Roman Catholicism, once monolithic, became a house divided; curiously, in the
process it became less relevant to people's lives.
"I think the Vatican has lost its credibility," Crumley says. "The pope is trying to bring
things back to the way they were. Some people in my community would love to see that
happen, but I don't think most people pay much attention anymore. The things church
officials write about just don't have that much to do with the people."
What's more, he notes, "The church is no longer the primary influence on people's lives.
Nor is the family. Television is. The church has become a victim of the surrounding
culture rather than an influence on it. There is no sense of the transcendent. It is simply
another voice competing for media attention."
If the institutional church doesn't adapt, then it could be said, Crumley contends, "that
religion fell apart of its own weight, that we didn't do our job."
In the meantime, Crumley is intent on the affairs of Imaculate Conception Parish and the
people it serves. On this night he will tell a visitor about the stir created by some
parishioners who believe the Virgin Mary is appearing in the church. Then he will meet
with other local pastors to discuss the town's reactions to a shooting at a high school
party that left a teenager dead.
Last night he spent an evening with three generations of Dardens, ate red beans and rice,
and discussed a wide range of concerns -- from Belinda's curiosity about certain rules
and regulations ("I don't want to go to church with a bunch of hypocrites") to Dan's faith
("There's been a few times I've gotten into a tight fix that I would not have gotten through
without him; I think you need the Good Lord"); From Susan's Mass attendance ("I go to
church for myself; I know I do wrong but you go to church to try to do better") to Rita's
view of priests ("When I was growing up, my parents and teachers put priests on a
pedestal, next to God. They could do no wrong. If you believe the media today, you'd
think they're as human as the rest of us").
And the day before last, Sunday, "Father Bill" joined the Vilcan clan for a birthday party
and a Cowboys game on TV. There, among generational and personal differences, it
became apparent that Bill Crumley, parish priest, is a fisher of disparate souls. He is the
point man for an institution in flux, one that simultaneously attracts devotion,
disgruntlement, indifference, and intense scrutiny -- a church as complex as the
individuals and as diverse as the groups who call it their religious home. An object of
love and sometimes contempt. A human institution.
The church includes Robert Vilcan, Mary Ann's 22 year old son. The tribal policeman. A
good friend of father Bill's. A young man who stopped going to Mass four years ago when
his 28-year-old brother died. A young man who, while scolding his two puppies (Bow and
Arrow), will tell you of the vision he had of his brother after he died, a vision which had a
profound effect on him. "I have a personal relation to God," he explains. "I speak to him
like I speak to you, pretty much. I'm very content and feel that if I were to leave here
tomorrow, I'd be ready to go."
Robert Vilcan will also tell you: "The Catholic faith is nice. The church is there for the
community and all that good stuff, but I can worship God right here all by myself.'' "The
church," he says, is "repetitious, the same old thing. Still, if a child can grow up and get
something out of it, then I'm all for it"
"I still want to be married in the Catholic church. I just don't feel I need it."
This church also includes Robert's mother, Mary Ann, who will tell you: "Mass is
something very personal. It's a devotion. If only one time a week, it's a time we come
together as one body, as one family, in friendship. What I get out of it is fulfillment. I come
to return my love to God, to honor him on that day -- all together, not by myself."
She will also tell you, "My mother taught me to put my life in order: "Here's God," she
explains, holding her hand above her head, "and here's everything else." Her arm
sweeps left to right, waist-high.
And she will tell you about her husband who recently lost his leg to diabetes, and about
her other son, Robert's brother, who died four years ago. "When you lose your own," she
says, "It's a pain you can't relate to. But I feel that if I'm right with God, there's not
anything he and I can't handle."
And this church includes Edna Delhaye, who will tell you: It's my church. I was baptized
there, received my First Communion there, made my confirmation there, I never miss
Mass. To tell you the truth, I don't know what I'd do without the Catholic Church. If I didn't
have the Catholic Church, I wouldn't want to live."
And it embraces Marie St. Blanc and Belinda Darden and Charles Dapremont, a black man
who, at the vigil Mass last Saturday evening, led the procession holding the Book over
his head, then did the readings, then joined his wife and children and grandchildren in a
pew while Charlene Delahouyasse, a young blonde woman with Down's syndrome,
brought bread and wine to the altar during the Offertory.
And it includes all those who were in Mable Vilcan's kitchen that Monday morning when
Father Bill Crumley said mass as he had practiced doing as a little boy, shepherding this
small band of believers, standing alter Christus, a straight-shooting fisher of disparate
souls, in this remote outpost of the 2,000-year old Catholic Church, in a parish that could
be anywhere.
"Do this," Jesus had said, "in memory of me."
Reprinted (without photos) from Notre Dame Magazine Summer 1994, Volume 23, Number 2 pages 18-23.
Kerry Temple, managing editor of the magazine was author of article. Reprinted with permission.
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IMMACULATE CONCEPTION CHURCH
3041 CHITIMACHA TRAIL
CHARENTON LOUISIANA 70523
USA
337-923-4281