Christianity: The Underground Church

Bowing his head over the bottle of Saint-Emilion and a sliced loaf of whole-wheat bread on the living-room table, the priest prayerfully recalled the Last Supper: “And so we remember what Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Take and eat, for this is my body.’ ” The consecration completed, the 24 men and women in the room kissed each other on the cheek or shook hands, as a sign of peace. While a guitar plunked softly in the background, the worshipers shared the bread and wine and sang a hymn from the Mass for Young Americans by Folk Composer Ray Repp:

Sons of God, hear his Holy Word! Gather ’round the table of the Lord! Eat his Body, drink his Blood, And we’ll sing a song of loves:

Allelu, allelu, allelu, alleluia!

Simple and sincere, the informal Eucharist was identical to countless others celebrated by the Christian Layman’s Experimental Organization, a group of thoughtful Roman Catholics in New Jer sey, who gather regularly to study, pray and worship. How long they will remain Catholics in good standing is now problematical: this month Bishop George W. Ahr of Trenton stripped the organization’s priest-adviser, Father George Hafner, of his right to say Mass and hear confessions, and threatened him with excommunication for conducting illegal worship services. Hafner has vowed to carry on as spiritual guide to CLEO. Says Hafner: “Something as good as this for these people should not be stopped by legal action.”

Making Masses. Although CLEO has lately basked in the unaccustomed glare of publicity, it is typical of countless secret and semisecret organizations in the U.S. that together add up to what Episcopal Nightclub Chaplain Malcolm Boyd calls an “underground church.”

Much like CLEO, the underground churches consist of dedicated, intellectu al Christians who meet in each others homes to study the Bible, discuss contemporary issues and worship together at informal, often improvised Masses of their own making.

Chaplain Boyd attributes the growth of these cells to a feeling widespread among believers that to find true Christianity and meaningful social involvement they must go beyond traditional churches, which are controlled by “bish ops with price tags all over their bodies.” Jesuit Sociologist Rocco Caporale of the University of California sees the underground church as a return to the personalized “mystery dimension” of early Christianity and a reaction to the massive, corporate impersonality of institutionalized parishes.

Because of the slow pace of renewal since the ending of the Second Vatican Council, the underground church movement seems to be strongest among Roman Catholics—although most cells ecumenically include Protestants, Jews and even atheists. A few operate with quasi-official approval. On Chicago’s South Side, for example, 40 members of St. Philip Neri Catholic Church, including one of its assistant pastors, form the nucleus of an underground congregation called Vatican 21. Why the name? Explains Robert Keeley, 29, a schoolteacher: “The church was supposed to be carrying out the spirit of Vatican II, instead all we got was Vacuum II.” The cell conducts its own baptisms—the whole contingent turning out to sing hymns over the baby—and meets every other Tuesday night in one of its members’ homes for prayer and religious discussion.

Reason for Secrecy. More often than not, underground churches are as clandestine as spy rings, have neither a name nor a formal organization, limit membership to a trusted few. In this sense, at least, they resemble the cells of the zealous Catholic lay organization Opus Dei (TIME, May 12). A major reason for so much secrecy is that the interfaith membership includes renewal-minded priests and nuns who fear the wrath of their bishops for taking part in illegal services.* Nonetheless, many of these clerics regard the services at underground churches as far more meaningful than Catholicism’s official liturgy. Says one nun who belongs to an underground cell in California: “When one member looked up from prayer one evening and said, ‘We’re all friends,’ I knew we had something new and very rich in community here.”

Sociologist Caporale, who reports that similar underground churches are rising in Europe and Latin America, argues that a major weakness of the movement is its introverted quality: unless the cells maintain some connection with the official church, they may turn into inbred holiness clubs. Publisher Donald Thorman of the National Catholic Reporter, however, is convinced that the movement will not soon disappear, largely because so many clerics have become involved. “There have been innumerable unofficial movements within the church before,” he says, “but they came and went rapidly because they lacked the unifying factor of a priesthood and a liturgy of their own.” He suggests that the underground cell might well become an attractive middle road between unacceptable institutionalized traditionalism and abandonment of the faith.

*Last week, Patrick Cardinal O’Boyle, Archbishop of Washington, D.C., cracked down on an underground cell called “The People” for celebrating informal worship services without ecclesiastical supervision.