Tale of One Parish

At St. Gertrude's Church on Chicago's North Side, even the traditional Mass is a little too hip for some old-timers. "I miss the Latin Mass; it just seemed more reverent," says Raymond Seitz, 68, who married into the middle- class parish in 1950 and is still smarting from the seismic Vatican II reforms of the early 1960s. "And when they started ending the Mass with this 'peace be with you' stuff, where you have to shake your neighbors' hands or kiss them, well, that didn't go over well at all." But at St. Gertrude's, the 10 a.m. Mass is downright stuffy compared with the alternative 10:30 Mass held each Sunday in the adjacent parish gymnasium. It features folk music and an open dialogue between priest and parishioners during the homily. "When they started that folk Mass I was waiting for John Wayne to come down the aisle on a horse singing 'Yippee-yi-yo-ti-yay!' " grumbles Seitz, a member of the parish council. "They say, 'Oh, you old fogies, all you want to do is hear the 45-minute Mass and get out.' But we go to church to pray and meditate. We don't want to listen to pop music."

Liberal parishioners counter that they don't want to petrify in their pews listening to stodgy sermons, which is why the "gym Mass" attracts about 80 mostly young worshippers a week. Keeping both factions happy is the delicate challenge that confronts Father William Kenneally and thousands of other priests like him throughout the U.S., who must minister to the world's most rambunctious group of Catholics. That tumult is reflected in the way American Catholics view the Pope. A TIME poll shows John Paul II enjoying a 74% approval rating. However, 73% of Catholics also feel they can make up their own minds on such issues as birth control. In fact, 89% believe it is possible to disagree with the Pope and still be a good Catholic -- a stance that John Paul II would vigorously contest.

Caught between pre-Vatican II conservatives who threaten to leave the church if the Mass is further altered and liberals who find the current liturgy too limiting, Kenneally, 59, must regularly supplement prayers with politicking. "The challenge for me is not in being between the church hierarchy and the ordinary people but in being between the flanks of the ordinary people," he says. Especially when the ordinary people have such deep and conflicting feelings about the church hierarchy.