By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
Are the people who live in America’s cities less Christ-like than those who live in small towns and rural areas? Michael Rossmann, a Jesuit scholastic (a member of the order, not yet ordained a priest), does not say that, not in so many words. But he comes close. Rossmann is now studying at the School of Theology and Ministry of Boston College, after teaching at Loyola High School in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. In his column in the September 1-8 issue of America, he writes of the lack of human interaction he finds on the streets of the urban area where he now lives.
Rossmann observes that “during the course of many long walks in a bustling urban neighborhood, people seemed afraid to look at me,” preferring to keep their heads down “looking at their phones or their dogs — anything but the person passing them — so that they did not have to make uncomfortable eye contact with a stranger.”
He contrasts this with his experience in Tanzania, where perfect strangers constantly called out to him and struck up conversations on the street. He writes sadly of how “it’s not exactly comforting when people do not acknowledge my existence,” now that he is back in the States. He writes, “I found myself thinking, ‘Don’t you know I want to say hi to you. Please look at me!’ I was surrounded by people in the heart of the city but still felt lonely.”
Rossmann is convinced that people would be happier and more fulfilled as human beings if they found a way to break through this anonymity that is part of urban life. He points to “studies that indicate that the more social interactions we have — even with the person who tells you your shoe is untied, or the sneezing stranger to whom you say, ‘God bless you’ — the happier we tend to be.” He finds in his own life that “if I have extra pep in my step for seemingly no reason, it’s often because of seeing the goodness of humanity in the kindness of a stranger” that makes “us feel that we’re noticed, that we’re human, that we’re not alone. And isn’t that what we really want.”
I don’t want to put words in Rossmann’s mouth, but I think I would be on safe ground if I added that he believes this is how Jesus would want His followers to live and shape their society.
At the risk of being presumptuous, I am going to offer Rossmann some words of comfort: I submit that he is going to get over this impression of urban Americans very soon. I think I can say that with confidence, since I went through a similar period of confusion in my own life — with some reverse spin. My problem was trying to figure out why people in the coastal areas of North Carolina were so much friendlier and concerned about me as a person than my neighbors in New York City.
For about ten years in the 1990s, my late wife and I had a vacation home on one of North Carolina’s barrier islands. I wasn’t the only one who noticed the phenomenon. So did my wife and my relatives from New York who came to visit: “Everyone you pass on the street says hello to you down here,” they would say, with a mixture of surprise and delight.
You have to remember, now, that my family was part of New York City’s “Catholic ghetto,” from schools and parishes where we were taught to love our neighbors as ourselves as brothers and sisters in Christ. Why were the people down here, mainly Protestants, so much more expressive of their regard for each other? We couldn’t figure it out. In our world in New York City, when you passed someone on the street, you said nothing to them, unless after a quick glance, you discovered it was someone you knew.
I spent years on New York City’s buses and subways pressed up against people for sometimes an hour or more, without even a nod or a smile to acknowledge their humanity. And now, perfect strangers in North Carolina, would greet me with a big smile and a “Good morning” or a “How are you today?” Was it that Carolina Baptists were more concerned with the wellbeing of their fellow men and women than Catholic New Yorkers?
No? Then what is the explanation? I went to my usual source of wisdom for an answer: my mother. The first time she came for a visit, I asked her if she noticed how much friendlier the people were in North Carolina than back home. Her response: “That’s how New Yorkers are,” she said with a shrug. Case closed. No, I don’t think she would have said hello to Rossmann. (On second thought, maybe she would have if he were wearing his Roman collar.)
What conclusion did I eventually come to — and to which I think Fr. Rossmann will also come? I am convinced that — for the most part — the aloofness one finds in urban areas is not a reflection of an indifference to our fellow men and women. I would bet serious money that Charles Manson would smile and say hello to people he passed on a quiet boardwalk in North Carolina. And that Archbishop Sheen kept his head down and avoided eye contact with the people in the crowds as he walked from his rectory at St. Agnes to Grand Central Station.
My point? I contend that the lack of human interaction that one finds among city folks is not the reflection of an inner moral or religious disposition. It is a product of the large numbers of people that one encounters in city life. I am not exaggerating for emphasis: There were people living three or four houses away from me for 25 years in my old neighborhood in Queens — that I never set eyes upon. They were “neighbors” only in the most formal sense. And when I lived in an apartment in the Bronx for the first three years of my marriage, I — literally — never saw four of the seven other tenants living on the same floor.
Come on: If I had said hello to everyone with me on the subway on my way to work in Manhattan, in the manner that people in Carolina would say hello to me while I was there, I would have been hoarse by the time I got to Times Square.
City-dwellers, for much of their day, meet humanity not as individuals, but as part of a great throng. If one wants to judge their compassion and concern for their brothers and sisters in Christ, the place to look is their parishes, youth groups, civic organizations, and neighborhood clubs — “the lesser and subordinate organizations” through which the Church instructs us to organize our societal lives in the teaching on subsidiarity. My hunch is that Michael Rossmann will discover that before much longer.
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