New church is rising to serve growing parish
St. Aloysius in Jackson has a membership of about 6,000 families
BY DAVE BENJAMIN Staff Writer

DAVE BENJAMIN Construction work is continuing at St. Aloysius on Bennetts Mills Road in Jackson, where a new church is being built to serve a parish that now numbers more than 6,000 families.

JACKSON- Parishioners at St. Aloysius Church, Bennetts Mills Road, will have a new church and sanctuary by the end of this year.

The Rev. Scott Shaffer, who has been at the 40-year-old parish for eight years, said membership now numbers more than 6,000 families.

Shaffer explained that the Rev. Mamedeo Morello was the founding pastor of St. Aloysius when it was built on a farm.

Near the end of his tenure, Morello was able to look back and see what had been built during his 30 years as spiritual leader - the church building, the cafeteria, the first wing and the addition of a gymnasium.

Just before Morello retired, diocesan administrators informed him that he needed to add a school, and so plans were drawn up to do that.

Monsignor Casimir (Casey) Labzinski, who succeeded Morello at St. Aloysius, ended up building the school, which opened about 10 years ago.

Shaffer said, "When I was asked to take the pastorate, the bishop said to me on the day that he installed me here, "Scott, you're going to have to build a new church.' I have been here for eight years, and over those eight years we have averaged more than 500 new registrations a year.We have gone from about 2,200 families to about 6,000 families."

The church offers Mass six times on the weekend to accommodate those who attend services. More than 1,700 children attend religious instruction and 400 children are enrolled in the St. Aloysius School for grades one through eight.

"Almost six years ago we started talking about and dreaming about a new church, where it might be placed and what size it would be," he said.

The new church that is under construction will seat at least 1,000 parishioners, compared to the current church that seats 500.

"In the course of our discussions and using some resources, particularly a book called 'Repitching the Tent,' we learned about church architecture," Shaffer said. "Between myself, Scott Erdy and Dave McHenry, the project architects, we presented to the people an idea of where we came from originally.

"We spoke about God and making his presence known in a covenant with Abraham and Moses. We discussed the Ten Commandments, which were carried in the ark of the covenant.

"Then we went through the Basilica form that was taken from public buildings in ancient Rome and from the temples," the pastor said. "And out of that developed a form that a lot of people, when they think of the church, think of this classic Gothic Romanesque structure. The Gothic architecture which grew up in France was very vertical and God dwelt in unapproachable heights."

He said those buildings were steeply spired and reached up to heaven. Eventually, church architecture was brought to where it is now.

"After some of those meetings the architect … really thought about the idea of pitching the tent and how we celebrate God's presence in the community," Shaffer said. "In the Catholic faith the true presence is in the sacraments of the body and blood, the Eucharist."

Church leaders also studied about St. Aloysius, their patron saint who died when he was 23. Aloysius was a Jesuit novice who was born to nobility and wanted none of it. He just wanted to be a priest. He died from the bubonic plague while taking care of the sick, Shaffer said.

There were four major devotions in his life: the Eucharist, the Passion of Christ, the BlessedMother and the choir of angels and saints.

"The architect, thinking about this, said he didn't just want a long wall of Sheetrock," Shaffer said. "He wanted it to be interesting inside and so he took those ideas, along with the four devotions, and said what if we could float a roof, like a tent, and then secure it physically and also figuratively by the four devotions, four patrons. So we have four tie-downs."

Within the building, the devotions of St. Aloysius will be represented. The Eucharist will be the altar, the BlessedMother will be an alcove area for prayer and there will be a statue of the Blessed Mother. On the opposite side of the church there will be an area where the choir will be located, while the baptistry will be at the entrance of the church.

About five years ago the church began a capital campaign and people started to make pledges toward the construction of the new facilities.

"We had a goal of $3.5 million, but the project is over $7 million and some of that will have to be financed," Shaffer said, adding that pledges are still be accepted. "There's nothing greater than a person, of whatever faith he might be, saying, 'I helped build that church.' One thing that would help would be if every [parishioner] who has not pledged could look at a threeyear time period and make a pledge."

Shaffer said many of the workers who are building the new St. Aloysius Church have built other churches in the diocese.

"They have a passion for what they are doing. They really love building a house of worship," Shaffer said.

The new church is a modern structure and Shaffer said there are elements that everyone will be able to relate to in the church. The baptismal font and the altar from the existing church will be used in the new church.

There will be radiant heat in the floor to maintain a constant temperature, he said. An icon artist from Alaska has been commissioned to complete theMother and Child.

Shaffer said it has been a joy to serve the St Aloysius community for the past eight years. He is also the pastor at St. Monica's Church, a congregation with 1,100 families that is on Route 528. There, he conducts Mass in English and in Spanish.

"Every day is an adventure," he said.