c. 2007 Religion News Service

SLIDELL, La. _ The walls will remain, as will the foundation. New stained glass will grace the now-empty window frames, while fountains and gardens will replace the pews that once stood on the floor of Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church. The site will become a place for quiet reflection, much like the Lourdes Grotto in southern France, one of the most visited pilgrimage sites in the world.

Initially, plans called for rebuilding the church, which was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, on its original site, but new elevation requirements for buildings that flooded during the storm made that impossible. Now, officials are ready to move forward with a plan to build a new church on property the Archdiocese of New Orleans owns down the street, while turning the old church location into an outdoor site for individual worship.

Parishioners voted in December on where to place the new church, said the Rev. Frank Lipps, the church’s co-pastor. The church provided two designs from which to choose, beginning a lengthy rebuilding process that involves considerable input from about 1,200 families that make up the flock.

Pat Andrews, the church’s director of religious education and a parishioner for 29 years, said the process has troubled some members of the church parish, which was founded in 1890 and is the oldest Catholic parish in Slidell. But those involved understand that it can’t be rushed, she said, and now that a plan is taking shape, people are excited about moving forward.

Formulating a plan to rebuild the church has been easy compared with the task of replacing parish records and locating scattered parishioners, Andrews said. In fact, this will be the fifth time in the parish’s 100-year-plus history that a new church has been built, which makes the prospect seem less scary, she said. The present church opened in 1963.

However, she said this will be the first time that parishioners have a say in how the church is built.

Craig Oakman, a member of the rebuilding committee, said it’s important for parishioners to get behind the project and feel that it’s worth doing. The parish is going to be asking a lot from them, including their time and money, so members must feel like they’ve had some say in the process, said Oakman.

He credited Lipps and co-pastor the Rev. Kyle Dave with including parishioners in the planning process, which gives everyone a chance to weigh in.

When Lipps and Dave came to Lourdes last March, they believed the church could be rebuilt at its original site. They learned a few months later that they would have to raise the floor from its present height of 9 feet to 11, which the existing walls would not be able to take, Lipps said.

Tearing down the church and starting from scratch at the site never entered anyone’s mind; officials and church leaders decided instead to turn the church into a sacred spot, such as a grotto.

Andrews finds the grotto idea appealing, saying it touches the emotions and feelings of the parishioners, especially the older ones who remember when the present church was built. She called the grotto “a wonderful bridge” between the old and the new, noting that demolishing the church would be too painful for most churchgoers.

The church is holding weekly workshops to talk about the kinds of things that need to go in its new building, Lipps said. Then parishioners will be invited to tour churches around the area to get ideas about what they’d like to see in their church, such as baptismal founts or flexible seating.

(Christine Harvey writes for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans.)

DSB/PH END HARVEY

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