Pax Christi Catholic Church lacks traditional trappings: kneelers, missals, dark confessional booths, votive candles and statues of saints.
Some people walk in and walk right out again – never to return.
Others so welcome the friendly atmosphere of this contemporary church that membership has soared from 40 families in 1988 to 1,600 families today. Some willingly drive right past neighborhood parishes – in places like Thornton, Broomfield or Castle Rock – just to worship here, where the number of parishioners is expected to double in five years.
Like Colorado during the Gold Rush, the story of the Diocese of Colorado Springs, and the parish of Pax Christi, is about growth.
It’s also a story of the Mountain West, the fastest-growing part of the United States, where Catholicism – its largest religious denomination – spreads faster than prairie grass.
Since 1990, for example, the number of Catholics in the Diocese of Colorado Springs nearly doubled, from under 64,000 to 125,000.
“Catholicism is not about excluding people but including people – getting bigger and bigger,” says the Rev. Ken Przybyla of Pax Christi.
He recalls how a certain group in the parish once wanted Pax Christi to remain small.
“We said, ‘Well, there is a nice thing about being small, but that’s not what Catholic means. It means the doors being open to receive people.’ ”
Here, the entire spectrum of Catholicism exists: traditionalists, moderates, progressives and whatever falls in between.
As with any parish, there are shades of disagreement over everything from doctrine to papal authority. But, ultimately, unity undergirds disunity.
Holding it all together is Przybyla (pronounced Priz-bil-a), a warmhearted, athletic priest who has hiked 23 of Colorado’s 54 14,000-foot peaks.
At age 53, he’s a baby-boomer who came of age during Vatican II. When counseling parishioners, who have a wide range of views, his style is to listen.
“The last thing I’d tell people is what to do, because then I pick up the burden,” he says.
“I try to hear where people are coming from. Maybe introduce some ideas to think about stuff in a different way, or clarify it, or put it in a different light.”
The history of Pax Christi, which mirrors the earliest days of Catholicism in Colorado, offers one answer to a critical question:
Facing a severe shortage of priests, how can the Catholic church continue to expand its flocks?
Iin 1887, Denver’s first bishop was a circuit-rider named Joseph Machebeuf, a Frenchman who frequented Colorado’s mining camps, consecrating bread and wine on the altar he had stashed in the back of his horse- drawn buggy.
Almost one century later, Bishop Richard Hanifen of the Diocese of Colorado Springs found himself in a curiously similar position.
By then Colorado had cars, churches, even
cathedrals. But Hanifen oversaw a mission
diocese. He had detected the need for a parish in the rolling prairies of northern Douglas County. He had the land, but he had no building and no priest.
So Hanifen founded Pax Christi on the concept of lay leadership. The laity signed up visiting priests to officiate at Mass, but parish acolytes did everything else: creating liturgies, preparing parents for baptism, and children for First Holy Communion.
Pax Christi was only the second parish in Colorado to try this revolutionary approach.
“It was difficult for people to understand at first,” says Hanifen, explaining that canon
law allows this unusual practice under certain
circumstances.
“Where there is a shortage of priests, you can do it,” he says.
One hot summer day in 1988, about 40 families celebrated the first Mass of Pax Christi in the gym at Northridge Elementary School.
For more than a decade they would show up
early each week, set up chairs and hang church banners, faithfully transforming ordinary into sacred.
“Those young families were excited about starting a community,” says Hanifen. “They felt like pioneers.”
Suddenly, they had something that many American Catholics sought for decades: a more active role in church governance.
“Everyone took ownership,” says Paula Sarge, one of the original members, now pastoral associate at Pax Christi. “The people themselves were the church. ”
Before they even had a resident priest,
Pax Christi became one of two Colorado
churches named in the 2001 book “Excellent Catholic Parishes: The Guide to Best Places and Practices,” by Catholic author Paul Wilkes.
One of their values, inclusivity, is evident even in the architecture: The 800-seat sanctuary is round as the wafer distributed during the Eucharist. Before The Lord’s Prayer, people reach across aisles to hold hands, forming concentric circles of love and respect.
“Vatican II said that church is the people of God,” says Przybyla. “Jesus lives in the midst of the people. That’s where the spirit dwells, so our gatherings are in the round.”
The round sanctuary emphasizes community, or the eminence of God, rather than
the transcendence of God, symbolized
by high altars and high ceilings in more
traditional Catholic churches.
Here, the focus is on the people, and their relationship with God.
“We don’t put a whole lot of emphasis on
the rules, because we’re doing the rules, but
we’re all above them in a better order,” says
Przybyla.
He points to the stages of human moral
development, where some people are
motivated by fear of punishment and others by altruism.
“This is really the best way to live,” he says
of this highest human emotion. “It incorporates everything below it, and you come to a higher level.”