I am another former OLOTA parishioner with some insight into some of your recent topics. . . . . I have found the ones with excerpts from other former parishioners to hit the nail on the head, particularly your entries from 9/22/19 and 10/29/19.The visitor goes on to compare many features of parish life at Atonement under Fr Phillips to a cult. It seems to me that the "long con" as opposed to the "short con" does require a certain level of belief in the con artist as a miracle worker of some sort -- look at Bernie Madoff. So I'm not sure if there's a clear line of demarcation between one and the other, and there's room to see both in Fr Phillips's long career.That being said, I may be able to offer some perspective. I was pretty much raised at the parish. My family started attending in the mid-90's when I was about 8 years old. I was confirmed there (in the early days - the walls of the church were still white!). I was involved in various choirs there over the years under a handful of choirmasters.
. . . Your post from 1/9/2020 talks about how Fr. Phillips believed in "fake it till you make it". I don't think this was so much of a malicious con-man scheme as it sounds; I think his interpretation of his mentor's words was more along the lines of "if you build it, they will come". I believe this theme was the line of thinking that led to the expansions of the church and of the school buildings, except for maybe the last one which is still unfinished. I think that one had to do with securing his legacy, perhaps before his retirement and/or before consequences of Deacon Orr's misdeeds caught up to him. At one point they were talking about adding an "Atonement university" so they would have a seamless education from pre-K all the way through college; perhaps this grandiose vision got the best of him.
However, he did not want his parish to behave like a mainstream "big parish". He frequently talked down about other parishes in the area - never by name, but I heard him say more than once that we should visit other parishes, just so we know how good we have it at Atonement. This elitist mentality was prevalent for the church as far as liturgy (they used to have bumper stickers that said, "Worship like you mean it"), but most especially anything to do with the school. Father always bragged about how "his" kids were doing, how many blue ribbon awards the school had won, etc. The announcements in the parish bulletin were becoming overrun with scholastic and athletic achievements of the school kids. I also have insider knowledge that Father ran the school at least for his last years as a proud grandfather, happy to share the kids' accomplishments but ignoring problems. I think it's safe to say now that with the case of Deacon Orr, this habit of sweeping problems under the rug was a running theme for the school and most likely why they're still having problems to this day (in addition to the fact that although there is new leadership, a good percentage of those who work at the school have been there 10-15 years at least).
As the focus shifted to the school and its seeming endless accolades, parish life became non-existent. I remember in the mid-to-late-90's when they would have annual picnics for parish families to enjoy. We would gather in the wooded area on the parish grounds and enjoy BBQ and fellowship. This was one of the few times one would ever see Fr. Phillips in "civilian" clothing, before he adopted the habit of wearing the cassock all the time. Over the years this event was eclipsed by the King's Fair, an annual fundraiser for the school. A group of people did get together for fellowship regularly, but this was held at a parishioner's house. Some parishioners did eventually revive coffee hour after Masses. In my opinion these attempts were too little, too late, and merely tolerated by Fr. Phillips. If it didn't involve the school, he simply wasn't interested. Somewhere along the way, it became less of a parish with a school and more of a school that happened to have a parish.
Unless it was a school Mass, children were best seen and not heard. The deacon at our current parish reassures us parents of young children who are less than well-behaved during Mass that the Church is either crying or it's dying...and we are definitely not dying! But at Atonement, Fr. Phillips used to stop the Mass and call out parents either from the altar or the pulpit to either get their not-so-silent kids under control or utilize the cry-room or the babysitting service offered in the kindergarten room of the school. It was not always so publicly humiliating, though. I remember one Mass I was sitting behind a friend of mine who was visiting from another state. Her baby was getting squirmy in the middle of Mass. The usher that day, who happens to be related to me by marriage, came up to her and told her to take the kid to the cry-room. I can still see the look of embarrassment on her face, that she was genuinely trying, and that perhaps that baby was actually a little better behaved that day than he normally would be in church. She was stunned at first, and then she did get up, probably out of fear of causing a scene. For a parish that is supposed to be breeding grounds to continue their school, "Let the little children come unto Me" was not high on their priority list.
There was little else offered at the parish for involvement. They had Boy and Girl Scouts (Boy Scouts have since been replaced by a similar type of group), rosary after the Saturday morning Mass (at the same time as confessions), various novenas and devotions throughout the year, and of course, Fr. Phillips' Bible Study. Adoration is offered from Friday morning after Mass until right before the first Mass on Sunday. I'm guessing the reason it is still limited to that time frame is that they have a hard enough time finding adorers for the hours it is currently available. Even glancing at the latest bulletin (now available on the parish website, a nice improvement), they are still campaigning for adorers for certain time slots. Since numbers are down all around, I wouldn't expect to see them offer perpetual adoration any time soon.
Back in the day, CCD used to be offered for kids who were homeschooled or attended public or other private schools. Either attendance of CCD or the school was a requirement to receive First Communion and confirmation. I received confirmation after one year of CCD, but I kept attending because I was homeschooled and enjoyed having a class to go to. (I went all way through high school, which was then taught by Deacon Orr.) I think the main reason it was offered was because the school did not initially offer pre-K-12th grades. For a while, they only had a few grades and progressively added a grade every year. Once the entire range of grades was offered at the school, they saw no reason to continue CCD. Parents who were interested were told that they should just enroll their kids in the school if they wanted them to have a religious education. This extended to all facets of life too - I know of a homeschooling family who wanted to use the gym and the athletic facilities at the school and were told they needed to enroll their kids in the school if they wanted to take advantage of these benefits, despite the fact that all their boys were altar servers and the entire family served the parish as much as they could.
. . . For all the hype, I was not impressed by what I saw at the school. By their fruits you shall know them, and the school kids were rude, elitist, and lacking in the piety that the pictures of smiling, reverent kids in red, white, and black plaid uniforms portrayed. There was an event that the adult choir, which I was part of, joined efforts with one of the school choirs. I was shocked when one of the music teachers had to collect cell phones from the kids...in church, in front of the Blessed Sacrament, moments before we started singing! I thought for sure they would have learned some reverence, or had the maturity of self-control. These were either middle school or high school students. How is this the fruit of the best school on earth, that kids who were old enough to know better and behave better, acted just as poorly as the kids up the street in a public school? The excuse that was offered was that the teachers could only do so much, and that it was up to the families themselves to fill in the gaps to improve their children's behavior. For a brief time I was particularly close to someone high up in the school. I learned more negative things about the internal workings of that school to convince me that my kids would never attend such a place.
But here's something I'm beginning to notice, not so much about Fr Phillips but about the growing number of parishioners who became disillusioned but who continued in the Catholic faith and in fact have been growing in it at other parishes. This goes to my current thinking about the Gifts of the Spirit that are infused at baptism, wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. These people who've grown have received the grace that allows them to develop these gifts and move forward.
It says a lot about these parishioners, of course, but I'm wondering if in the end Our Lady of the Atonement did do important work, perhaps in spite of some of the figures involved.
