‘Their roots go deep’: Fabric of rural parishes includes deep connection to faith and family

Farmers work in a field in Spencer County. Saint Meinrad Archabbey’s Church of Our Lady of Einseideln is visible in the distance. Rural parishes like nearby St. Meinrad Parish in St. Meinrad and others throughout the Archdiocese of Indianapolis offer a unique connection of faith and family. (Photo by John Farless)

By John Shaughnessy

As soon as he received the invitation, Benedictine Father Adrian Burke knew he was in a world far removed from the suburban Indianapolis area where he grew up.

The invitation to a “hog slaughter” came from a southern Indiana family that belonged to one of the rural parishes where Father Adrian served as an associate pastor at the time.

“It was one of the great moments of facing the fact that I wasn’t brought up on a farm,” Father Adrian recalls with a smile. “It was a Saturday after Thanksgiving, a cold day. They slaughtered nine hogs. And they taught me every step of the way. I’m standing around with this huge, extended farm family—five to six families in all—telling stories and sipping homemade wine.

“I’m watching the women in the kitchen mixing the sausage with their secret recipes, and I’m watching the men in the barn cutting up the hams, the pork chops and the shoulder roasts. It was incredible for me, growing up as a person in the suburbs who thought food comes from a grocery store. Instead, it comes from farms and families. It changes a person when you realize that fact. I have a deeper appreciation for the land, the farmers and the people I serve.”

It was one of Father Adrian’s first lessons in the differences between rural parishes and urban parishes. Both may be part of the same archdiocese, and they undoubtedly share the same Catholic faith, but there are noticeable differences in the way that their respective members live their life and their faith.

‘Their roots go deep’

Rural parishes and their members are distinctive, whether it is St. Mary Parish in Lanesville, St. Isidore the Farmer Parish in Perry County, Holy Guardian Angels Parish in Cedar Grove, Our Lady of Providence Parish in Brownstown or any of the other “country” parishes in the archdiocese. (See related story: St. Isidore shooting match is part of celebration of rural life)

“What I like about living in the country is the rural mentality is a lot less ‘Type A,’ ” says Father Adrian, who serves as the administrator of three parishes in the Tell City Deanery: St. Meinrad in St. Meinrad, St. Martin of Tours in Siberia and St. Boniface in Fulda. “It’s much more relaxed. And people generally know each other. That’s not my experience in the suburbs.”

That difference can affect approaches to faith.

“In some pastoral minds, the idea is to create community in the parish,” says Father Adrian, who grew up in St. Barnabas Parish in Indianapolis. “You see that approach in the suburbs and urban parishes. In any rural parish, that’s not the task. The people already know each other well, and they pride themselves on being connected. Many are blood relations. Their roots go deep. For them, the parish community is a faith expression of being connected to each other.”

A self-proclaimed “farm boy,” Father Harold Ripperger also appreciates faith communities in rural areas.

“My preference is for a rural or country type of existence where you have grandmom and grandpop and their families living in the same area,” says Father Ripperger, the longtime pastor of St. Mary Parish in Lanesville in the New Albany Deanery.

“I grew up on a 40-acre farm in Franklin County in the Brookville area. Almost everyone in St. Peter Parish there is my relatives. People in rural parishes tend to help each other out more because they’re probably related to each other. In a small town like Lanesville, if something happens down the street—good or bad—people respond.”

That attitude also extends to helping the parishes in rural areas, says Father Bill Williams.

“Many of the people in my parishes are farmers. They work with their hands, and they use those gifts to help the parish,” says Father Williams, the administrator of St. Michael Parish in Brookville and Holy Guardian Angels Parish in Cedar Grove, both in the Connersville Deanery.

“In many of these smaller communities, the parish is the hub of social life as well as the spiritual center. They recognize [that] they need to come together to make it strong because if they don’t no one else will take care of it. It’s done for the deep love of God and the Church.”

Benedictine Father Guy Mansini has noticed that same quality as the pastor of St. Isidore the Farmer Parish in Perry County. In his six years as the spiritual leader of that Tell City Deanery parish, he has also learned another reality about ministry in rural faith communities.

“If a pastor wanted to change things, he’d have to move slowly,” Father Guy says. “They’re small places, but they’re rooted and change is gradual.”

Challenges and connections

There also are challenges that seem inherent to rural parishes. As an example, Father Adrian mentions the Tell City Deanery, where most of the parishes are rural and small in membership numbers.

“The challenge is to make ends meet, to keep the parish going, to pay the bills,” he says. “The parish populations and demographics have gotten so it’s hard to financially support the parishes. The parish festivals really make a difference. They help us get through the budget year.”

The often close-knit, blood-connected roots of rural parishes can also present a challenge for new people who are just moving into the area. Considered as “outsiders,” new parishioners can be viewed with a certain wariness, at least at first.

The focus on family connections can even occasionally have a less-than-desired impact on faith development, Father Adrian says.

“Their faith is very much rooted in the family,” he says. “Their Catholicism is cultural. They’re so deeply rooted in their Catholic faith that they identify with it in the same way they identify with their family. They take it for granted sometimes. Some of them just might come to Mass at Christmas or Easter or to have their child baptized. I talk about it in my homilies. I preach to these cultural Catholics that to be Catholic means to practice your faith.”

So, like the Church itself, there are strengths, imperfections and challenges that are part of the fabric of rural parishes.

Yet even as Father Adrian tries to objectively offer his assessment of rural parishes, he leaves no doubt that leading those kinds of parishes is what he wants to do.

Rural parishes and their parishioners have won a place in his heart. After serving his three parishes for most of the past decade, he has been taken in as family, sharing in experiences that have included “working at a turkey farm, putting up hay and watching a calf being pulled out of its mother, who was having a hard time giving birth.”

Indeed, Father Adrian says that if you were looking for the perfect way to capture a rural parish, it would be in its parish picnic—a time when people join together, eat and talk, everyone savoring the bonds of faith, family and fellowship that connect them.

That life has left its mark on him.

“When I go home to see my parents now, I get anxious being in the suburbs,” he says. “They’ve turned me into a country boy.” †