No one was hurt. The peace of a Sunday morning was shattered and parishioners were stunned when a man walked boldly to the lectern at my church and began shouting.
I can’t say that this is a full eyewitness report. For a few seconds I shut my eyes. Yelling — whatever the message being delivered — doesn’t register with me. So I shut my eyes, held my breath and prayed that everyone there would be safe.
The disruption Sunday at Everett’s Immaculate Conception Church ended quickly when men got up from their pews and removed the speaker from the church. There was quite a scuffle. It took several men to grab the man’s arms and walk him outside.
No one was hurt. And for all that racket, no one was heard.
I’ve seen people wander into church before, people who maybe don’t appear to belong there. I’ve seen people there who may be homeless, confused or under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Isn’t that the point, though, that churches are open to all?
The man Sunday had the look of someone who could easily be an ordinary parishioner. His timing was perfectly suited to his purposes. Young, fit-looking and nicely dressed, he apparently knew the order of the Mass. He approached the lectern just as church member Ed Olson finished the Prayers of the Faithful. After each intention for prayer, the congregation had responded in the usual way, with “Lord, hear our prayer.”
“I was just finished,” Olson said Tuesday. “The priest says a final, concluding prayer, and I was waiting for him to do his thing. And this guy started striding up the aisle like he was supposed to.”
Suddenly, Olson said, “he started spouting, and I knew it was wrong.”
The man had a point to make — a couple points, actually. He began by shouting that what we should be praying about is sex abuse by clergy, as though no one in the church had ever prayed about that. He had some personal rant about money, too.
Justifiable grievances? Perhaps so.
I am a Roman Catholic, but not one who’d ever say that the church can do no wrong. When allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced in 2002 involving a priest who’d been sent to our parish, I wrote about feeling betrayed and deceived. That priest, John Cornelius, was later defrocked by the Vatican.
In a statement on the Web site of the Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle, Archbishop Alexander Brunett addresses “the tragic reality of child sexual abuse.”
Those wrongs do not make the actions of that man in church Sunday right.
For me, his raucous interruption raised a specter of violence in what should be the safest place. He might as well have been shouting out reminders of terrible incidents at churches around the country.
Last July, a man with a shotgun killed two people at a Unitarian church in Knoxville, Tenn. In December of 2007, a gunman killed four people at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colo., and at a nearby youth mission dormitory.
After the Colorado shootings, The Denver Post newspaper reported a long list of similar tragedies, among them: a pastor and two worshipers killed in 2007 at a First Congregational Church in Missouri; a man in Baton Rouge, La., accused of killing four in-laws and his wife during and after services at the Ministry of Jesus Christ Church in 2006; a man killed seven people and himself during a service for teenagers at Wedgewood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1999. The list went on, but you have the gist of it.
I know nothing about the man who interrupted our worship Sunday. I know he frightened people, failed to convey whatever message was intended, and did his cause no good.
Our pastor, the Rev. Bryan Hersey, was unavailable to comment Tuesday, and my call to the Seattle archdiocese was not returned. I wanted to know whether churches have security procedures in place.
Olson, a frequent lector at our church, isn’t aware of any formal plan. “You saw five or six men who had the wherewithal, the courage, to deal with it,” he said.
And freedom of speech, what about that?
“It’s freedom of speech until the point it becomes disorderly conduct,” said Sgt. Robert Goetz, a spokesman for the Everett Police Department. If police had arrived on the scene, and the man had refused to leave when asked, he could have been arrested for criminal trespass, Goetz said.
“The guardians of the parish stepped up,” Olson said.
It should be the safest place. All are welcome. Peace be with you, and let peace be with us.
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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