Amid consolidations, Sea Isle church expands

SEA ISLE CITY, N.J. - With its landmark white steeple and cedar lapstrake interior walls built like the hull of a ship, the wooden Roman Catholic sanctuary on Landis Avenue has welcomed the faithful in this Cape May County resort for 126 years.

So it's fitting, say members of the thriving congregation at St. Joseph's Church, that the 225-seat Gothic-style worship space will be preserved as a wing of a $7.2 million, 1,300-seat church expected to be completed by Memorial Day weekend next year.

"Nobody wanted to lose touch with the deep roots of faith that go back generations in this community," said Katherine Custer, who has been a member of St. Joseph's for nearly 30 years and who serves on the parish council.

"People have so many family memories here . . . weddings, christenings, vacations, and reunions," Custer said. "It's been such a part of people's lives here for so long."

So far, the council has about $2 million in donations for the project. The balance will come as a loan from the Diocese of Camden, church officials said.

At a time when the diocese is closing several parochial schools because of shrinking enrollments and engaging in a major parish consolidation because of a shortage of priests and falling attendance at Mass, building a big church on a Jersey Shore barrier island that is sparsely populated in the winter seems an anomaly.

"I think it just speaks to the enormous faith that people in this community have in this church," said the Rev. Joseph Perreault, St. Joseph's pastor.

"I think this has to do with the historical roots of this community, and that many [vacationing] families have been coming here for generations. This had always been their bungalow, their place to get away to," Perreault said.

"Eventually, many people have chosen to become permanent residents down here, and with that has come their extended families," he said.

Sea Isle was founded in 1882 by Charles K. Landis, the visionary who in the late 19th century also developed Vineland, a farming community about 40 miles inland where many Italian immigrants settled. Sea Isle attracted heavy concentrations of the same population and their descendants, according to historians.

"Consequently, many of the people who have come here to visit or settle permanently happen to have also been Roman Catholic," Perreault said. Church officials estimate that as many as 75 percent of Sea Isle's residents and visitors are Catholic.

The new church, designed by KCB Architects of Hatfield, Montgomery County, is a steel-frame structure with a cedar exterior that is meant to blend in with the original sanctuary. St. Joseph's officials have called the expansion project "Connecting in Faith" and want members to understand the importance of preserving the parish's history as it moves into a new era, Perreault said.

St. Joseph's, with a congregation of almost 1,000 year-round families and probably 10 times that on a summer Sunday, has long needed more space. For years, Sunday latecomers have crammed aisles, vestibules, the choir loft, and even the wide front steps.

At times, priests have added services or moved the Sunday celebration of the Eucharist to a nearby 800-seat church auditorium, which also became crowded.

But it never seemed like the right time to build. Financial strains prevented proposed projects from proceding, Custer said, until the need for more room could no longer be tolerated.

Despite consolidations all around them - parishes in Stone Harbor, Avalon, the Wildwoods, Ocean City, Longport, Margate, and Ventnor all have undergone mergers or soon will - St. Joseph's planned church will be one of only two built in the diocese in the last three years.

At a groundbreaking April 18, Bishop Joseph Galante blessed the site and said St. Joseph's continued to fill a "strong need" within the Sea Isle community.