By Gretchen Keiser

In a freshly painted house on Piedmont Avenue, the Glenmary Research Center has opened.

Father Bernard Quinn, the soft-spoken director, is seated at a cleared table in the front room, sunlit in the morning. He is talking about something that is hard for a novice to grasp, even with the help of an hospitable cup of coffee from an automatic percolator in the next room. Father Quinn has already explained the relationship of the Glenmary Home Missioners to the Glenmary Research Center and is now explaining the heart of his work for the past 15 years. It involves the development of "middle range principles," he said. A man whose work involves the development of principles has a love for both the theoretical and the grassroots where good principles are supposed to work.

The principles that Father Quinn has spent 15 years developing concern the small rural parish. In fact, he has written a book of almost exactly 100 pages, plus appendices, published by Glenmary in 1980 and entitled "The Small Rural Parish." On any page, Father Quinn said, abound "middle range principles" -- that is, information about a small rural parish that falls between theological abstract ideas about parishes and the actual skills and how-to manuals that talk about structuring parish life. The principles "bridge the gap between the vision that might come from Vatican II and something that would be a skill," he said.

But it is difficult to capsulize the work that is done at the center because, like the roots of a tree, the research has branched and branched from its original point.

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The Glenmary Research Center, which recently moved to Atlanta from an office in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., has a concise history. Founded in 1966 the Center was designed to serve the research needs of the Church in rural areas, where Glenmary Home Missioners have served since the order was founded. Glenmarians look upon rural as towns of less than 10,000 "away from cities, suburbs and urban fringes." As missionaries, they come into areas where, generally, there are fewer than 250 Catholics. Working with the approval of the local diocese, the Glenmary priest and local Catholics start a church community. When a certain level of development is reached, the diocese receives the parish and the Glenmary will move on to another mission area. So, they are much concerned with, and experienced in, the development of small parishes in rural areas. The Center, which is probably the only place in the United States created for formal research into the rural Church, is something of a link between the front lines, where missionary work is going on, and the rear guard, where theologians and members of the hierarchy envision the Church.

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Is it really necessary to study and plan in order to come up with what is needed to shape a parish community in, say, rural Georgia? Perhaps the answer is that it is necessary to study and it is necessary to work with and learn from pastors in the field in order to connect the visions of the Second Vatican Council with the reality of a struggling parish community, Father Quinn said.

"Vatican II opened up so many doors for us" that the process of examining each aspect and making the vision concrete has become an overwhelming task for the religious leadership to handle unaided, Father Quinn said. The type of planning for parish development that is the work of the Glenmary Research Center and that is contained in the book and other works of the Center "can contribute to serenity and joy in meeting the challenges of the Church," Father Quinn said. The book, each chapter extensively rewritten before the final document emerged, illuminates aspects of church life that many people may take for granted. Without specifically raising each question, it talks about what a parish is, how it differs from other types of Christian community, what a parish can provide to help and support its members as Christians who are called to live a particular vocation in the world. By inference and sometimes directly, the book also talks about what a parish is not and what it is not equipped to do.

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While this type of principle is the "product" produced by the Research Center, it is acquired through a very active relationship with many different types of people over a long period of time. When the Center started in 1966, its first 15-year program -- a broad area of research assigned by the president of Glenmary -- was "The Rural Mission Parish and Correlative Ministries." In the process of reaching that research goal, the Center produced some 74 miscellaneous publications and about 100 reports that addressed different aspects that had to be clarified first. Father Quinn, who has a doctorate in the theology of mission from Rome's Gregorian University, participated in workshops in 100 U.S. dioceses and was tied in to field research in a wide variety of places when that work dovetailed with some aspect of his research. "That's not why we exist," Father Quinn said of the multiple reports, educational programs and research projects that occupy files and storage areas of a large copying room at the Piedmont Avenue Center. "But we get into those things to learn something."

The method of learning balances pure library research and raw data gathered in the field against the thoughts and reflections of pastors, religious, laity, workshop participants and other researchers. "I do not have the time to actually go out and do pastoral work," said Father Quinn, who founded St. Mark's parish in Clarkesville as a Glenmary missioner before he became research coordinator and then also director of the Center. "And," he continued, "The pastors don't have time to sit in the library and read books." Bringing together the two kinds of people in partnership is the aim of the Center's approach, he said.

"We aren't necessarily the people who have the answers. We aren't going to teach them. We're going to search with them -- mixing up their experience and our theory."

An equally important dimension of the research is that statistical information is subordinate to the broad religious mission of the Church which the Center wants to aid. For example, a recently released survey of church affiliations and a county-by-county statistical breakdown in the United States is useful, Father Quinn said, in what it can show Catholics about themselves and their community: how many people living in their area belong to no church at all, who their Protestant neighbors are and what denominations they belong to, what the distribution of priests is in the region, in the United States. Essentially the information is used to help Catholics focus concretely upon essential theological ideas: their relationships with other Christians, their call to reach out to people who live outside any church community, their need to be active lay members.

The membership study, which is generating data and maps for dioceses across the county and for several different Christian denominations, was essentially "a footnote" to the study of rural parishes, Father Quinn said, which helps to explain why colored index cards dot his bulletin board, keeping track of the different projects he has a hand in and their stage of readiness at the moment.

But he is equally aware that, as the Church welcomes a necessary degree of planning and research into its life, there are dangers to combat. "Perhaps the greatest danger is to treat the Church like a business," he said. To work against that danger, Father Quinn actively seeks to use religious symbols both in the writing of the publications and in the art and graphics used to illustrate them. More basic yet, he said, the danger is combated "by integrating prayer at every level" as work progresses. Essentially the Center is a religious center and its work "a religious mission. We say the Office, we read the Scriptures, we try to pray for the people we're working with," in the Church's rural missions, he said.

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And the Center's 10,000-volume library, concentrating upon sociology, literature, history, mission theology and religion in the South, is an inviting source for those who would like to make use of it. "We don't have a lending library, but people are very welcome to come and use the facilities," Father Quinn said. In the renovated house -- with the traditional carriage house behind -- work, office and library facilities have taken over the first floor, while living quarters are on the second. The simple, freshly-painted interior combines some art and hangings that speak of the Appalachian region and others that stress the Center's Catholicity.

For example, an image hanging prominently just as one enters the front hall depicts Jesus crowning Mary Queen of Heaven, "not a familiar image in the South," Father Quinn observed. The conversation turned to that image as Father Quinn explained a bit about the new program that he will embark on next year at the request of the president of Glenmary -- "Evangelization of the Unchurched in the Rural Missions." The exploration of the needs of those who belong to no church community will be undertaken in a spirit that is neither "a narrow, sectarian spirit, nor a spirit that says it’s not important to be a Catholic," he observed.

"There is a strong desire to work with other Christians in this task of reaching the unchurched," he said. "Yet we affirm with Vatican II the unique role of the Catholic Church in the process."

Similarly, he said of the Center that it is open to full ecumenical relationships, "but at the same time we try to be fully ourselves," stressing, "that we are really Catholic."

"I want the Center to say that by what's around here," he commented.

(The Glenmary Center is located at 750 Piedmont Ave., Atlanta, GA, between Fourth and Fifth Streets and may be reached by calling 404-867-6518)