ARTICLES

UCSD Counter-Reformation

Dominicans Still Settling In

By Robert Kumpel

Once under the direction of Paulist priests, the Newman Center at UCSD now finds itself led by a young Dominican, Father Mark Pedrez, 38, who took the helm last summer. Known for over 30 years as the "Catholic Community at UCSD," the Newman Center got its new name from Father Pedrez. According to my sources (UCSD students), some of the older Catholics feel the students don't know who Cardinal Newman was and the name doesn't sound "inclusive" enough. One student said that "They [the older parishioners] don't like taking a cardinal or potential saint of the Church and using his name. They think the old name made it more comfortable for not just students, but for everyone else to come in and participate."

This UCSD student, call her Carol, has observed that members who encouraged activities such as rosary-making, catechism studies, and scripture studies were rebuffed by the lay staff. "I'm talking about the education and faith development committee. There are a few older folks on the committee, even though it's supposed to be a student-run committee, and they didn't like any ideas like that. Some of them are alumni, a few were staff or professors. They're all probably in their 50s and 60s and their kids have moved on.

"One student suggested selling Catechisms and having a catechism seminar. They [older committee members] said, 'Oh no. We don't want to use the Catechism. The Catechism is too hard to read, and the students wouldn't understand it.' Someone suggested having the rosary. They said, 'No. That's traditional prayer, and people don't do traditional prayer anymore.' Mass was really uncomfortable because of all the strange liturgical innovations."

"Of course, this was when the Paulists were still running the center. [The Dominicans took over the UCSD Catholic community from the Paulists in July, 1998.] There were several. One was Father Peter Abdella. The other was Father James Moran. The other priest that was there, Father Tom Allain, was a recently ordained priest from Washington D.C. He had a very strange view of the Church, too and where it should be going. Around '97 or so, he left and was assigned elsewhere. Next thing you know, he pops back up here, not as a priest, but as a married man. He and his wife are still members of the chaplaincy. She sings in the choir. I have no idea whether he was laicized or not. [The Paulist Fathers headquarters in Queens, New York says, "Fr. Allain has definitively left the Paulists and is not serving as a priest."]. He continues to sponsor RCIA candidates there. Part of the process is that the catechumens leave at the Gospel during Mass, and he's the one who breaks scripture with them. He recently gave a talk on "Catholic Prayer and Scripture." Here's a former priest telling people that he finds it very difficult to pray and that he doesn't pray that much, although his wife prays. There were comments about how the priesthood needs to change to get more people and if the Church is going to grow, it has to allow for women priests He teaches using B.C.E. -- Before the Common Era rather than B.C. He's enamored with the Song of Songs and emphasizing its graphic sexuality -- that's his pet scripture. He made a comment that if you really had to say the rosary, then you really should say it on an expensive rosary, because a plastic rosary that glows in the dark is not sacred enough to say the rosary on. The students that we were sponsoring were just flabbergasted that here was a person that should be encouraging them and getting them excited about becoming Catholic and he does the opposite."

By Carol's account, RCIA is the last bastion of liberal dominance at the center. The Newman Center brings in a large number of catechumens every year. Carol estimates that there will be nearly 30 this year. "It's really the laywoman who is in charge, Lynn Neu. She's been here for years. I'm not sure why she's still here, because when Father Mark took over, he got rid of everyone. I think the reason why she is still here in the chaplaincy is because she gets her funding from the university and not from the diocese. There are wild prayers that they say at RCIA, especially on the retreat. There's a prayer to the four winds -- very new-age. A lot of this stuff was sent in a package to the bishop. I think that was instrumental in having things modified recently."

Carol says that Father Pedrez had no knowledge of the packet of complaints sent to the bishop. "He later found out about it, but it was done without consulting any of the Dominicans. Some people spoke to him privately about it, and he was pretty open to it. It was sent to Monsignor Callahan, the diocesan chancellor. He said, 'Thank you for the information. We hope that some of the changes we make there will be to your liking. And there was an impact. Father Pedrez is a pretty orthodox priest, but at the time, he was the junior priest and he had an obligation to his superior. But the diocese was instrumental in kicking out the Paulists and helping institute the changes that came last summer after Father Cassian Lewinsky left." Father Lewinsky left at the end of June, 2001.

"They started a candlelight Mass every Wednesday night. The lay staff recognized that there was kneeling during consecration and very traditional reverence and they didn't like that. Father Cassian immediately instituted changes. He brought everybody up around the altar and everyone had communion at the same time as him and omitted the Centurion Prayer. After July, all this changed back to normal. Now we have beautiful candelight Masses on Wednesday nights."

One of the biggest changes, was the location. For nearly 30 years, under Paulist control, the Newman Center rented space from UCSD's Lutheran center. "They had very ecumenical ideas and didn't bother to buy property for the chaplaincy. So in '99 when the Dominicans replaced them, the bishop gave them the responsiblity to find a new place. And the Lutheran place was tiny. Demographics show that about 40 percent of UCSD's students are Catholics, but they were only getting about 300 students for all the Sunday Masses at most. Let's say there are 28,000 students here on campus, they're not even getting three percent of the Catholic students! Now they've moved to Good Samaritan Episcopalian Church and now they're getting about 1200 students every Sunday."

Father Lewinsky, the previous pastor of the Newman Center, kept many of the Paulist Fathers' strange liturgical practices, including the absence of the Nicene Creed and Gloria at Mass, not washing his hands before the consecration, using common glassware for the Eucharist, and using illicit recipes for altar bread. Congregants were allowed to self-communicate the consecrated Species from a glass cup, helping themselves from the altar where it sat. All that changed on his departure last summer. "As soon as his superior, Father Cassian, left, Father Pedrez took over. He bought nice vessels for the sacred elements. He washes his hands."

Two particular practices were particularly offensive: The lectionary had been scrapped and gender-inclusive readings were pasted in student missals. The other practice was dumping the unused consecrated Blood of Christ at the foot of a tree. "Father Pedrez got a real lectionary. We don't have feminist language in the readings anymore. We recite the Nicene Creed and the Gloria. It's a normal Mass. The Paulists wouldn't clean the sacred vessels properly. They had what they called 'The Sacred Bush' outside and they would dump the Precious Blood onto the bush."

The older Newman Center members have not taken Pedrez's restorations lying down. Father Pedrez has hosted "town meetings" to air grievances. "The problem is that there is a real rebellious spirit over there with the older folks. There is even a group of young Korean Catholics who couldn't take all the liturgical nonsense, and they formed a group of their own, called Kyrie. The won't go to church at the Newman Center. They get in their cars and drive all the way to the Immaculata for Sunday Mass. This guy who helps them came to a town hall meeting and complained. He said something like, 'We are all part of the John Paul II generation, and the pope has got us excited about learning about our faith and being faithful to God. Your liturgical experiments are leftovers of a bygone era of rebellion. It's not exciting for us anymore -- in fact, it's a real drawback, and it's a grave injustice that they cannot come to Mass here because you have made them feel so uncomfortable.'"

Carol says that the older holdouts think that college students should welcome their ideas because as students, they should be open. "And we are. We are so open to the truth that we desire to have the Mass in the way that the Church says it should be given to us.... As long as you are nice to them and show emotion. If you show a few tears, that really helps. One person, a recent convert, went to a town meeting the other week and listened to the leftists making one angry statement after another about the bishop and the pope. They were commenting how angry they were that these conservative students were trying to change this parish, and this guy got up and countered them and he was so passionate that he started to cry! It was amazing! People started clapping for him and hugging him!"

Another student, call him Kyle, wanted to become a Catholic but was so disappointed with the RCIA process at the UCSD Newman Center that he fled to another parish. "My first experience there was not all that great. I was Protestant at the time, but learning about Catholicism. I got the sense that the people at the get-together were pretty liberal. I knew Catholics viewed scripture differently, but not that differently. They had questions about the scriptures -- they said that the scriptures weren't inerrant. I could make the distinction between people who claim to be Catholic and what the Church teaches. Later, I tried participating more when I heard that the Dominicans were there and things were going to be getting better. It was apparent when I would go that the large majority of students and faculty that were there were to the left. The thing that struck me the most was the lack of formation. Many of the people attending functions were uninformed, to put it mildly and there wasn't much formation going on in the community itself. I didn't see much opportunity to become more informed, except through the RCIA program--which left a lot to be desired.

"The Dominicans were here for about two years and the changes were slow in coming. I did notice that they immediately stopped emptying the vessels into a bush. Even Father Cassian was apalled at that. The Paulists said outright, 'There will be no rosary.' The Dominicans were more open to it. But with the older members of the community, it was like pulling teeth to get them to allow us to advertise the rosary group in the bulletin. Those were the initial changes, but there were still gender revisions in the scriptures at Mass. In the Old Testament, where it reads, "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob," they changed it to "I am the God of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rachel," and so on. It was bizarre and it kept on when the Dominicans first came. To be fair, I think they were afraid to rock the boat. They would still leave the cup on the altar and people would self-communicate. Father Cassian would pass out the host and people would sometimes receive before the priest would. But now those abuses are no longer done.

"The other thing is that Lynn (Neu) kept giving homilies. She would sometimes give a homily in place of the priest. Father Pedrez has told us that she is banned from giving homilies now at Eucharistic celebrations -- that was at a town meeting."

Kyle noticed most of the changes hit when they Newman Center moved to the Episcopal church. "At the time of the move, the bishop had ordered that certain changes be made. The main changes are that he ordered were that normal hosts would be used at communion, no lay homilies, and no more self-communication with the Blood on the altar anymore. We also use the proper lectionary, but they still gender-revised the Creed and Gloria. Anywhere where it mentions 'He' they replace it with 'God'."

Kyle describes the atmosphere of the town meetings as "volatile". "There are a lot of people who are really angry about the changes that have taken place. It's mostly the older crowd -- particularly the first town meeting, but more young people seemed to come to the second one. The young people who came are liberal too, and they are people who were just confirmed after going through RCIA. I know for fact that they are not formed and they know very little about the Catholic faith. Anyway, they're angry about the changes and they think it's unfair that the bishop made these changes without consulting them. I think they are sincere, but their sincerity is misplaced. They have their own traditions that they are attached to -- like making the bread. Some of them got pretty emotional about not being allowed to make the bread anymore. And the gender revisions -- people are just hurt over it as if they can't get past it. They really think The Church is a democracy."

Father Pedrez has been saddled with a position between being faithful to the Church and dealing with angry dissenters. "Father Mark doesn't come down in public on one side or the other unless he feels he needs to make a clarification. He pretty much stays neutral. The whole idea of the town hall meetings is for people to vent and to talk to each other because there is a gap between the younger, more conservative students and the older, liberals. And there is a considerable number of conservatives, but most of them choose not to go to the Catholic community. They don't like the way the Mass is done, so they're kind of excluded, because the Catholic community refuses to make any concessions to them.

"Bishop Brom and Monsignor Callahan have been very supportive in trying to restore orthodoxy to our liturgy. Monsignor Callahan and the bishop don't like what was going on and that's why they put an end to it. I think they see eye to eye with Father Mark on a lot of the issues, but I also think they are leaving a lot of it up to Father Mark as far as what he does now. But Father Mark has to remind the people that this is what the bishop has said. Any discussion on these issues is a moot point."

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