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[Man in Space]

Random serious question: How has the Catholic Church in the USA traditionally handled the fact that in that country, there were Catholics of different ethnic backgrounds, sometimes living closely together? Were there ever separate churches for, say, Irish, Italians, and Poles? I mean, aside from the basic effect of ethnically segregated neighbourhoods?

At least in Cleveland, I want to say that you can find both mixed and separate congregations—though the only ones I can confirm offhand are Orthodox (there’s a Ukrainian Orthodox cathedral near one of the McDonald’s I used to patronize while my Babcia was alive), but something tells me I’ve seen specific Catholic churches before.

[Raphael]

At least in Cleveland, I want to say that you can find both mixed and separate congregations—though the only ones I can confirm offhand are Orthodox (there’s a Ukrainian Orthodox cathedral near one of the McDonald’s I used to patronize while my Babcia was alive), but something tells me I’ve seen specific Catholic churches before.

Thank you!

[Man in Space]

Thank you!

You’re welcome!

Some useless ancillary trivia: My sister used to have trouble pronouncing “Catholic” when she was younger, so one of the churches we would drive by got nicknamed the “Half-a-Church”. This was extended when another underwent renovations and became the “Build-a-Church” to us.

[Travis B.]

I'm used to Orthodox churches being more explicitly ethnic than Catholic churches, with the ethnicity of Catholic churches being more a function of which neighborhood in which they are situated. However, take that with a grain of salt, as I have only been in Catholic churches for weddings and funerals.

[linguistcat]

My experience with Catholics in the USA is that they're Catholics first when it comes to what congregation they'll join, unless a specific church is the only one that has certain masses in specific languages. If you have Hispanic Catholics and English only speaking Catholics, and one church has Spanish masses as well as English, and another church only has English masses, then the one with Spanish mass is going to attract more Spanish speakers. But if for some reason someone can't make their normal mass and/or are closer to the other church, they might go to the other rather than not go to church at all. (Both may or may not have Latin masses but Latin mass has become a bit rare that I've seen. That said, my experiences were only direct until I was about 16 and indirect through family the last 20 years).

[Man in Space]

Over dinner this evening, my mother reminded me of the existence of a certain iconic local television skit.

Up in Cleveland, the local B-movie presenter Ghoulardi (Ernie Anderson, the same one from The Love Boat and Saget-era America’s Funniest Home Videos) was extremely popular. Despite only being active in the role for a handful of years in the early ’60s, his Ghoulardi is still referenced to this day. There have been some successors: The (late) Ron Sweed, “The Ghoul”, a crewman on the project who became an ascended fanboy with permission from Anderson himself; some bloke called “Son of Ghoul”, about whom I know little because he wasn’t on our local broadcast channels; and Svengoolie, who has seen reasonable success are likely the most well-known examples.

One of Anderson’s Ghoulardi crew was a guy named Chuck Schodowsky. He went on to sort of fill the niche that Ghoulardi had occupied, though he went about it a little differently. Regardless, a local weatherman named Houlihan ended up joining him, making it Big Chuck and Houlihan the Weather Man. Houlihan departed at some point and was succeeded by John Rinaldi. Rinaldi is a little person and Schodowsky is tall himself, so they naturally became Big Chuck and L’il John.

They were active until fairly recently, still hosting shows. When I was in high school, my family and I were on it once. (My father also appeared on the Ghoul’s show once thanks to someone spotting his and his friend’s Halloween costumes and Sweed writing a bit about it.) I’ve met them, and once, when I was in college, I wrote a letter to Big Chuck, and I came back from a trip across the state shortly thereafter to find a very nice handwritten reply.

They worked with a number of others—mundane, famous, and infamous; local or not—to various degrees. (The now late) Dick Goddard, a legend of local weather reporting, was a frequent collaborator (I sort-of met him too once; freshman year one of the band shows got rained out, so they put us all in this cramped, half-size gym and had us do the show in there. I was on the drumline, and in our opener, we had to modify one of the formations due to the space issues, and I basically ended up catty-corner to Goddard by less than 10 feet), as was Art Lafredo, and—yes, really—the notorious Dr. Robert J. White. Lafredo is relevant here.

Some of their skits have aged poorly, but most of them haven’t. Perhaps their most well-known skit (and my favorite of theirs) was “Chase”. Lafredo is the motorcycle cop, and the other two should be obvious.

[Civil War Bugle]

Random serious question: How has the Catholic Church in the USA traditionally handled the fact that in that country, there were Catholics of different ethnic backgrounds, sometimes living closely together? Were there ever separate churches for, say, Irish, Italians, and Poles? I mean, aside from the basic effect of ethnically segregated neighbourhoods?

I don’t have a citation handy but my impression is that it used to be relatively common, say a hundred years ago or so, for the bishops to take ethnicity into account when engaging in their canon law duty of drawing parish boundaries or whatever, but that something or other induced a shift towards purely geographic boundaries in modern times when there isn’t a compelling reason to do otherwise. My vague impression is that back in the day, the Irish did very well for themselves in the American Catholic hierarchy and that there was some resentment about this among other ethnic groups, and if I’m not totally making this all up off of misremembered stuff, I imagine a combination of that plus revisions to canon law plus the vibes of Vatican II were responsible for the current organization of parishes.

[Raphael]

I don’t have a citation handy but my impression is that it used to be relatively common, say a hundred years ago or so, for the bishops to take ethnicity into account when engaging in their canon law duty of drawing parish boundaries or whatever, but that something or other induced a shift towards purely geographic boundaries in modern times when there isn’t a compelling reason to do otherwise. My vague impression is that back in the day, the Irish did very well for themselves in the American Catholic hierarchy and that there was some resentment about this among other ethnic groups, and if I’m not totally making this all up off of misremembered stuff, I imagine a combination of that plus revisions to canon law plus the vibes of Vatican II were responsible for the current organization of parishes.

Thank you!