Five cartons of my first book, a 250-year history of Star of the Sea Parish in San Francisco, from 1776-2026, arrived last week. It’s got lots of pictures! Thirty-six photos, most of them archival and some from our own time, grace the book’s 120 pages. One of the most beautiful pictures is of John Paul II with Archbishop John Quinn at the Golden Gate Bridge in 1987, which I found in an old parish brochure. It took some weeks to locate the original in the Vatican’s archives, but the nice fellow in Rome was glad to locate it for me and sell the right to print it for 100 euros, which I consider a deal (see the photo below). I’ve got 300 copies of the book; if you are local you can purchase it for $25 at the parish office or after Sunday Mass the next two weeks. I’m also doing two book signings this coming Friday (at 1:30pm and at 7pm in the school auditorium). If you are further afield, you can get the book online at https://itascabooks.com/products/star-of-the-west-a-history-of-star-of-the-sea-parish-san-francisco?_pos=1&_sid=11f1b9e3b&_ss=r%2C. (the online purchase will cost you $30 to cover the online company’s fees, plus $4.50 for shipping).
To give you the flavor of the book, here is part of the Introduction:
Spanning twenty centuries, the Catholic Church is the longest continuously existing institution in human history. It is often perceived as a vast and impenetrable bureaucracy spread to every corner of the globe, governed by 2,000 years of laws and customs. In truth, however, its structure is remarkably simple. No Catholic anywhere in the world is more than three degrees removed from the Pope. The entire hierarchy rests on three levels of authority: the parish priest, the diocesan bishop, and the Roman Pontiff. Have a question about the faith? Start with your parish priest. Not satisfied? Go to your bishop. Still not happy? Your third appeal is to the Pope himself.
But it’s not easy to get an audience with the Holy Father, or even with the diocesan bishop, which is why parishes and parish priests matter. Second only to the ecclesia domestica, the “domestic Church” of the Christian family, the parish is the basic cell of the Catholic Church. While all Catholics should receive the Word at home, from our parents, only the parish can provide the Sacraments. In a sense, then, it is in your local parish that your hope of eternal life resides: in its baptismal font, its confessional, and its tabernacle. Your home parish is more important for you than the chancery offices and even the Vatican itself. Within the domestic Church, the most vital seeds of hope for eternal life are planted, but it is in the parish that these seeds are nourished.
What follows is the history of a Catholic parish, Star of the Sea Church in San Francisco, one of the 17,000 parishes in our country and 225,000 parishes across the planet. Each parish, like each family, has its own history. Our story begins with a Spanish Franciscan (Junipero Serra, California’s first saint), continues with a Spanish Dominican (Joseph Alemany, San Francisco’s first bishop), and becomes properly parochial with San Francisco’s first priest (John Coyle, Star of the Sea’s first pastor). One way to write history is to focus on its leading men and women, but their lives are themselves largely determined by the circumstances given them by the Almighty. The major characters in our story follow larger movements: the discovery of America in 1492, the discovery of gold in California in 1848, a major earthquake in 1906, and the waves of human migration precipitated by those events. This parish’s history is the story of men and women providing the things of God to these migrants, doing what the Catholic Church has always done: following people wherever they go, setting up missions and churches to provide Word and Sacrament.
The story of this parish is, in some ways, the story of every parish, and indeed that of the Catholic Church. The Greek word catolicos means not “universal,” as it is commonly translated, but more precisely “of the whole.” Each part of this church fundamentally manifests the whole Church. Your domestic church, your parish, your diocese, and the Holy See all reflect each other, and much understanding of the whole is to be gained in understanding the parts.
Here is the story of one local part, one parish, which portrays, in charming hues, something of the whole. I’ve entitled this book "Star of the West" because at the time of its 1888 foundation, Star of the Sea was the parish farthest west on the American continent—a shining bit of Christ’s light in the blowing sands and chilling fogbanks west of Gold Rush-era San Francisco. In 1888, nothing but lonely dunes stood between forty-nine Irish families and the Pacific Ocean. These families chose the expansive title “Star of the Sea” to describe both their location and their aspirations. Since then, these coastal wilds have been largely paved over and civilized, crowded with apartment buildings and coffee shops. Spiritually, though, the territory remains as perilous as ever. May Our Lady, Stella Maris, guide our paths through lonely lands and rough seas to our safe haven, Christ Our Lord.
Photo Credit: Arturo Mari, Vatican Archives.
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