Earlier this week, the Catholic Diocese of San Diego filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. This topic will not be discussed in the post but will help to explain the events that are covered.
My church sits atop a large hill in San Diego overlooking the ocean. There is a large window in the front of the church with eucalyptus trees behind it. Behind them you can see the pristine waters of of the Pacific Ocean. The street in front of the church is at an incline and the church is slightly lower than the street, on level ground.
It is Sunday, the sabbath. In church today, I had no place to sit but with my mother in the choir. I am now an unofficial member. Though cool for me, this is not the amazing event of which this writing for. After the priest had left church and the choir stopped with their final round “Parce domine, parce populo…” the congregants slowly began making their way to the exit.
I was among the last of those to leave with my mother. As we were standing outside, my mom greeting various people and slowly trying to make her way to the choir room to put her robes away. We were not quite to the door yet when the education minister, kind of the mother figure of the church, came up behind us pointing to the sidewalk next to the street, yelling “What in the world is that?”
It was surreal. It took a minute for me to register. The first thing I saw was a man in a black suit jumping up and down next to a music stand. A man was standing next to him with a video camera and another man was across the street with a video camera. “Oh no,” I thought to myself. “More people out condemning the Catholic church.”
“Christopher, go see what they want,” she said to me.
“Why me?”
It was too late. Another man from the parish was making his way up the steps to the sidewalk to find out for himself. He looked angry.
They exchanged words and then the man from the parish proceeded to walk back down the steps, all the while the man with the camera was filming him. The camera panned over everybody else. I felt a little weird just sitting their staring at it so I stepped inside.
“Do we know who they are?” asked the education minister.
“They’re sidewalk evangelists, mostly harmless,” a woman replied.
“Good, we could all use a little savin’.”
I headed back out after this. The man in the black suit had his hands up. Kids were standing on the steps, applauding. Our kids. This is when we left. Another man then confronted the sidewalk evangelist as we were driving away. The camera man was all over it.
As I left, I was wondering… Who is the evangelist to condemn? Who is he to say he is right and we are wrong? I certainly doubt God did.
