Finding Faith in Toledo: How Catholicism Shaped a City and Its People A Conversation about Religion with Ben Stalets and Doug Hinebaugh By Kelly Sankowski Photos by Doug Hinebaugh Toledo’s landscape is peppered with signs of the area’s largest religious denomination – old cathedrals, Catholic schools, social service buildings and – on Fridays in the spring – fl iers for parish fi sh fries. The city’s Catholic roots trace back to the waves of immigrants who moved to the city in the 19th century to seek economic opportunities in the area’s burgeoning industries: the railroad, iron and steel manufacturing, and construction of the Miami and Erie Canal, to name a few. As these ethnic groups settled into their own neighborhoods, they built churches to serve as spiritual and cultural centers. Toledo’s fi rst Catholic church, St. Francis DeSales, was established in 1841 and soon after expanded to serve the German population. The current church, which still operates as a chapel on the corner of Cherry and Superior streets downtown, was built in 1870. The cornerstone of St. Patrick’s Catholic Church was laid in 1862 to serve the Irish population, St. Hedwig’s Church opened in 1892 for the growing Polish population, and St. Stephen King of Hungary opened in 1898 for the Hungarian community. As Toledo’s population grew, so did the number of Catholic churches and schools. In addition to the priests who served these parishes, religious sisters played a large role in the Catholic church in Toledo. In 1854, fi ve Ursuline sisters arrived in Toledo and founded the original St. Ursula Academy on Cherry Street to educate children of all grade levels. The order also served as teachers in a variety of Catholic schools, and founded Mary Manse College – a liberal arts college for women – in 1922. When the Diocese of Toledo was offi cially established in 1910 (it had formerly been part of the Diocese of Cleveland), the fi rst bishop invited Mother Mary Adelaide Sandusky, a Franciscan sister from Rochester, Minnesota, to work with Polish immigrant children. She brought 23 sisters with her, and in 1917 they founded the Sylvania Franciscans, who continue to run Lourdes went to All Saints Catholic School. His impression of it, he said, was “that Catholic school was for rich kids and Catholicism kind of felt like a rich person thing in general.” Now, in his 30s, Stalets has become interested in Catholicism and attends Mass regularly at All Saints. Hinebaugh, TSN’s photographer, moved in the opposite direction. He grew up in the ‘80s in Point Place, where his mom’s side of the family all went to St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, and then moved to Perrysburg Township, where he attended St. Rose Women Priests in 2013 and soon after was excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church, which only ordains men to the priesthood. She founded Holy Spirit Catholic Community, which describes itself as an “inclusive Vatican II Eucharistic Community,” and has continued on after her death in 2023, but is not recognized by the Diocese of Toledo. For Hinebaugh, it was his grandmother’s death when he was a child that started his questioning of his family’s Catholic faith. “That shook me,” he said. “Because I was like, ‘no, what kind of good God would there be that my grandma who gave everything to be one of his children, and his servant, and she got taken that young, away from all of us?’ I was mad about that.” Around the same time, the Vatican released a document about “the pastoral care of homosexual persons,” which reiterated the Catholic church’s teaching that while it is not wrong to experience attraction to the opposite sex, it is a sin to act upon that attraction. “I couldn’t wrap my head around it,” Hinebaugh said. So, like many others have chosen to do, he left the church. Today, he says he looks back and is not bitter about any of it. St. Martin de Porres of Toledo University. For people who grow up in the area, including Toledo Streets team members Ben Stalets and Doug Hinebaugh, it is hard to avoid coming into contact with the Catholic church. Stalets, the TSN vendor manager, grew up in Rossford in a family that attended Lutheran services on holidays, and the contact with the Catholic church that he remembers most was his cousins who Catholic School through 6th grade, until he persuaded his parents to allow him to attend public school. He no longer considers himself Catholic. Just like the faith lives of these individuals, the Catholic church in Toledo has evolved over the past century. It has not been immune to the challenges that have faced the Catholic church on a national and global level, including rising secularism, the clergy abuse crisis and debates over some of the church’s teachings. Demonstrating one of these debates, a Toledo resident, Dr. Beverly Bingle, was ordained a priest through the Roman Catholic Doug Hinebaugh and Elsa Page 6 “I’ve got my own relationship and I don’t think I have to go into a house of God to be close to God,” Hinebaugh explained. “I think God is always in me and with me and I have my own conversations with him every day when I wake up . . . I don’t need to receive sacraments and do all that. To me, that just seems like a whole lot of steps that get in the way.” As Toledo’s population began to decline in the second half of the 20th century, so did the number of students Continue to next page
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