Toronto's Communion of Saints

In Toronto last week, I went to mass at St. Thomas Aquinas, associated with the University of Toronto’s Newman Centre. Not my choice; I was visiting with a friend who is a parishioner there.

But it was interesting; St. Thomas has quite a “progressive” reputation. Catholics of a certain left-wing bent go to mass there from all over Metro Toronto. Like my friend, who lives in North York.

And it is a thriving parish. It was chock full for the mass I attended, as it always has been in the past. Good rubbernecking, too: some of the parishioners are famous.

Knowing its reputation—one recent pastor was cashiered for straying too far from orthodoxy—I was on the lookout for innovations.

The most immediately obvious is that the pews are arranged in a U shape. The priest paces back and forth along the centre aisle for the sermon.

Next most obvious is that the crucifix is slightly unconventional: Jesus is not nailed to it, but apparently rising from it. It shows, it seems, the resurrection, not the crucifixion. And, more unusually, framing it is what looks like a large golden hula hoop. I’m guessing this represents the sun.

Next thing I noticed is that the congregation does not kneel. Nor can they. The traditional kneeling bar is absent.

The stained glass is also notable. Instead of depicting saints or Biblical scenes, they show people who have lived in the last century or so, and who, although often under consideration for sainthood, are not officially saints yet. Mother Theresa is there; so is Georges Vanier, a former governor general, John XXIII, Oscar Romero, and Kateri Tekakwitha. They also tend to be local, Canadian, figures. And they tend to be laity.

None of this is really unorthodox. But taken together, they seem to me to imply an unfortunate message: that all is well with the world as it is, and there is no need to work out one’s salvation in fear and trembling. These are, to my mind, rather too comfortable pews.

Indeed, the pastor of St. Thomas once actually said in a sermon I attended that “there is no need to preach to this group.”

The central aisle tends to diminish the symbolic boundary between sacred and profane: between what is and what ought to be. This is a comforting doctrine, to those in power; but not to the poor, those who mourn, or those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. The congregation, though, is very largely composed of those with some temporal status. The modern equivalent of Scribes and Pharisees, for the most part. University professors, journalists, lawyers. Some students, no doubt; but the congregation is not notably young.

Again, the rising Christ perhaps downplays the value of suffering for salvation; and the sun disk suggests that what is apparent, what is visible, is what is real. To my mind, this is a materialist, message. God appears instead in the darknesses: in the silences after the whirlwind, or on the night road to Emmaus. But it is consoling to those materially well off.

The absence of kneeling boards follows: there is no need to show humility before God. And the stained glass figures hint that sainthood is far closer and easier to achieve than we suppose. The women of the parish, of course, said all the prayers using strictly inclusive language: God is “parent,” not father, was made “flesh,” not man. I guess even better than imagining you are a saint bound for heaven is to imagine being God yourself.

I do not feel comfortable in this parish. I do not feel comfortable with this sort of Catholic “progressivism” generally, for it seems only self-indulgence and self-congratulation by a ruling elite.