How “Dunkirk Boat” families are building the Church in one town

Father José Noriega, a priest of the Disciples of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary, has a great analogy for families’ role in the situation facing the Church today.

He says each home is like a little ship of Dunkirk, where a flotilla of private vessels came to the rescue of stranded troops when nothing else could help.

My wife April has made it her mission to spread his idea that domestic churches — faithful families, little versions of the Barque of Peter — can save stranded souls, most recently in a talk she delivered at the Symposium for Transforming Culture at Benedictine College.

Last year, Father Noriega shared his Dunkirk plan at the college’s Family Week.

The Church today is in the position of the British in 1940 when 336,000 Allied soldiers were stranded at the French port town of Dunkirk, he said.

Any big ship sent to rescue them was easy pickings for the Germans, so the British tried another tactic: 850 small, private vessels set out from the British coast to save as many troops as each could fit. Together they brought the soldiers home.

In the same way, the “big ships” of the Church — the great Catholic institutions that were so successful in the past — are not always able to do their work. They are besieged by legislation, weakened by cultural forces, and damaged by “friendly fire” — attacks by fellow Catholics. 

But each home is a domestic church with a grace all its own. If each domestic church saves as many as it can, then we can make serious headway.

“Let me describe what Dunkirk looks like in Atchison, Kansas,” April said.

April knows the power of the parish — she herself teaches Confirmation there — but her talk focused on what individual families do on their own.

A Community Dinners initiative started when Cathe Sienkiewicz saw a homeless person living under a bridge and, “in the words of her husband, Jeremy, she felt she could not live a real and human Christian life and continue to do nothing about such suffering and poverty.”

When the dinner’s founders discovered how many free meals were offered already, “We thought people needed community more than they needed food,” Jeremy told April.

So now they gather people in a church basement once a month for food, conversation, and a sing-a-long with a band of parent-and-child musicians led by Br. Angelus from St. Benedict’s Abbey.

She also shares the story of the town’s chapter of Sleep in Heavenly Peace, whose motto is “No Kid Sleeps on the Floor in Our Town.”

Benedictine College School of Engineering’s Patrick O’Malley likes that the group creates a family-to-family connection. The work involves setting up the bed with the family who is receiving it and, said O’Malley, “Our eldest was 8 when we started so she and the other kids have grown up with this as part of their lives, and having a spirit of service wrapped up in our family ‘identity’ has been beautiful and very formative for the kids.”

So far, with the help of college students, they have provided 1,350 beds.

Even little boats can help, April said, citing the 12-foot Dunkirk boat, the Tamzine, as inspiration. 

“Even if we can only rescue seven people in our marriage’s lifetime, that’s vital. We need you!” she said.

“The smallest boats are those who simply invited others to do what they were already doing,” she said, “thereby building community and making a positive difference in the lives around them.”

One dad was saying Morning Prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours daily, so he invited his sons and their friends to join. Now boys head out on bikes or on foot early in the morning to pray at his home, and then some head to Mass together. Brother Maximilian from St. Benedict’s Abbey, and the Abbey dog, Pambo, join too.

A high school boy, Pio Zia, started a boys’ bike ride that leaves at dawn and winds up at the parish for morning Mass.

Other small boats include an informal “Knights of St. Benedict” high school boys’ group that has been a tremendous influence on our sons, and a more formal high school girls’ group held in a private home.

April described lots of small boats: Meal train efforts, homemade food and diaper drop-off boxes, and community-building get-togethers for women and men.

“We need to tell every domestic church to be a Dunkirk boat!” said April.

“We can find ways of going out, making small forays across the ocean that make sense and fit into our family’s lives on the one hand, but maybe still stretch us a bit on the other,” she said, and concluded: