While Oak Lawn’s St. Linus Catholic Church and Our Lady of the Ridge in neighboring Chicago Ridge started the process of merging early this summer, they have remained in many respects two distinct faith communities. But this year’s eighth grade confirmation class may have played a big role in jump-starting the melding process when enrollment kicked off at Our Lady of Ridge.
“A lot of the folks from St. Linus came over and it broke down a barrier,” said Rick Landry, a longtime parishioner and volunteer at Our Lady of the Ridge. “All of a sudden, it wasn’t ‘that place.’ They were able to attend Mass. They got to see it’s not so bad. They got to see where the kids are going and they’re getting more familiar. I think it’s going to be a good thing.”
The Archdiocese of Chicago announced in January it would close Oak Lawn’s St. Louis de Montfort Parish, and merge Our Lady of the Ridge and St. Linus as part of its Renew My Church initiative. Since 2015, the archdiocese has placed parishes into geographical clusters with the mission of reexamining and revitalizing Catholic communities.
The archdiocese is keeping both Our Lady of the Ridge and St. Linus campuses running, with Masses and services such as weddings and funerals being conducted out of both buildings, but with a single pastor and pastoral team overseeing both sites. The Rev. Wayne Svida, who was pastor of Our Lady of the Ridge, was reassigned. The Rev. Mark Walter from St. Linus now oversees the united church, known as Our Lady of the Ridge/St. Linus.
Walter said July 1 marked Day 1 of a process, not the flipping of a switch.
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“It’s the beginning of trying to bridge the two communities together,” Walter said. “It’s definitely the start, not the finish.”
While the process varies from parish to parish, depending on the needs, Walter said he expects the finish line to be three to five years away.
“We are really taking this a little bit slowly, but there’s no urgency, so we’re fine,” Walter said. “We have staff and parishioners who are willing to work together. That makes it a lot easier.”
Landry counts himself among those willing to make it work. He has been involved with Our Lady of the Ridge since 1992, and his wife grew up in the parish. Landry has led a missionary discipleship and evangelization team at the church. He also livestreams Masses.
Landry said he feels fortunate that Svida asked if he and his wife would attend the Renew My Church conference in 2018. Landry also read “Divine Renovation,” which he said is a major influence of the initiative.
“We were pretty aware of what was going to happen, but I don’t think anyone can prepare you for changes to a faith community,” he said.
This early stage of the merger involves a lot of organizational restructure, such as rationalizing staff and getting leadership in place, combining websites and bulletins, and figuring out a Mass schedule that makes sense between two churches.
“There’s a lot of nuts and bolts things that need to be done,” he said.
Walter said his mother used to have a saying: “Organization is the key to success.”
“I really believe that,” he said. “It’s just a matter of staying organized, staying focused. I think these sound like cliches, but ‘a day at a time,’ those things really work.”
There are also physical, structural things that need to get done. Svida paid off church debt at Our Lady of the Ridge and saved money, keeping cash reserves for improvements but held off on making them until Walter took over, Landry said. So they used some of that money to repaint as well as update the school building’s air conditioning.
Our Lady of the Ridge School closed in 2018, but the building remains. St. Linus School is the united parish’s school and retains its name. But Landry said the Our Lady of the Ridge school building is being used to host religious education and other programs, so they do not need to overlap in the school space. Landry called those dual building resources a benefit to this united parish.
The organizational and structural aspects of the merger could be completed soon, but the next phase will likely take much longer.
That change involves the priests and deacons. But Landry said the church is also making “prolific and progressive moves” from the traditional model to one that spreads out leadership and includes the laity taking some of the burden off the clergy.
“When you’re making culture changes like we are, you can pretty much guarantee the innovators and early adopters will get on board right away, and then the early majority, they’re the wait-and-see folks,” Landry explained. “The late majority folks are, ‘Well, if they don’t blow everything up, maybe we’ll get on board.’ The laggards, they’ll likely never get on board with it.”
Walter said in January he understands that a parish is a key part of Catholic identity, which makes changes like these tough, but he thinks everyone is trying to keep an open mind through the process. Eventually, the united church is to get a singular name that reflects one community, rather than its two former identities. But Walter said they are not thinking too much about the name, and he is still trying to get to know the other half of his parish.
“We’re going to choose a name at the end of the process, not the beginning,” Walter said. “We decided that once we start working with each other, then we can have a conversation about what we’d like to call ourselves.”
The crossovers have started among groups such as the Knights of Columbus and Society of Saint Vincent de Paul. But there is still plenty of work to be done before it starts to feel like a “whole parish,” Landry said.
“We’re still in the two separate communities, even though we started the uniting process,” Landry said. “There are groups that are starting to get connected like that, but I would say the larger parish at both worship sites are still feeling pretty distant from one another.”
Changing that is the trick, he said.
Walter said it is important to understand that the archdiocese has a desired outcome that is not specific to this united church; it takes a broader view that includes all of the groupings in the Renew My Church efforts. But in the houses of worship he now oversees, Walter is largely letting faith and the process guide the way through the unknowns.
“When we’re finished, I don’t know exactly what it’ll look like,” Walter said. “It’s like walking into the darkness. There’s not this plan: ‘When this is over, this is what it’ll look like.'”
Landry encouraged anyone going through a similar process to be hopeful. He said it is not about man-made decisions but service to God.
“We know we’re in the post-Christian age, so in order to really reach the society around us and be impactful, we have to make changes just like everybody else does,” Landry said. “We have to be meeting the needs of the people who are around us.”
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For this new united parish, those needs focus on the Oak Lawn, Chicago Ridge and Worth communities. Some of the changes mean adapting to a new generation that does not have a relationship with God, Landry said. All of that can be tough for Catholic communities that have been embedded in the area for generations.
“People natively don’t like change,” he said. “They just don’t. So people will tend to resist it. But if we’re going to continue to reach our community for Christ, if we’re going to continue to grow as a faith community, we had to make some changes. Let the process happen. Be prayerful.”
Bill Jones is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.