B2 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAY, DECEMBER 25 , 2021
religion
BY KEVIN ARMSTRONG
newark — Rudy Moni, the musi-
cian at Stella Maris, a Catholic
chapel in the shadows of empty
shipping containers at Port New-
ark, adjusted a microphone,
strummed his guitar and shouted
to the Rev. John Corbett on the
first Sunday of Advent.
“Count us off, Father!” Moni
said.
“A one and a two,” Corbett said.
Sixteen communicants sang
“Be Not Afraid” to commence
Mass. When they finished, Cor-
bett, 63, stood on the altar and
complimented the congregation.
“I feel like I’m at the Winter
Garden Theatre with Bob Dylan,
Van Morrison and Neil Young all
in one,” he said.
“All the stars come to Stella
Maris,” Moni said. “Let me tell ya.”
It is an eclectic constellation.
Longshoremen pray two pews
from armed U.S. Customs and
Border Protection agents, and
crane operators offer peace to cu-
riosity seekers as big rigs rumble
past the Nativity scene outside all
year on Corbin Street, a main cor-
ridor. To be heard, they sing above
a chorus of train whistles and
truck horns. As Christmas deliv-
ery deadlines loom during the
supply-chain crisis, cranes beep,
chassis rattle and the chapel vi-
brates when trucks pass. At night,
Corbett sleeps on a Murphy bed in
his small office. To meditate, he
wears silicone earplugs.
“We’re an oasis in the middle of
an industrial desert,” he said.
He is an unlikely headliner.
Born in the Bronx, he grew up
among bungalows on Silver
Beach, graduated from State Uni-
versity of New York Maritime Col-
lege in 1980 and set sail as an
engineer on petroleum tankers
from Portland, Maine, to the Pana-
ma Canal. He plied his trade for
three years before dropping an-
chor on Long Island, where he
bought a house — a handyman’s
special — and took a job with Con
Edison, working at a power plant
on the East River. But after three
years and a period with a charis-
matic prayer group, he experi-
enced a calling while raking
leaves.
“I felt Jesus next to me,” he said.
“He didn’t have enough good
priests.”
Corbett sold his house and
truck, moved into St. Joseph’s
House in Manhattan and went
from making $52,000 per year to a
$10 stipend each week. He pur-
sued the priesthood, went
through eight years of study and
was ordained at 37, on the same
day as his brother, Rich, two years
his junior. His first assignment
was at a parish in Jersey City, and
his second was as a chaplain in a
nursing home and then at a retreat
center in Kearny, N.J., before he
was assigned to the neighboring
port.
“I prayed to the Lord, and He
said be obedient,” Corbett said.
“I’m not typically obedient, but in
this case I was.”
The chapel’s address could be
hard to find. In 1977, the Rev. Char-
lie McTague ministered to seafar-
ers on their vessels and gatheredworkers to worship in a cinder-
block gatehouse by berth 50 on the
channel. Robert Chin, then a
crane mechanic who found the
chapel while logging overtime
hours on Sundays, recalled the
priest welcoming him to confes-
sion in a furnace room for lack of
space.
“Let’s burn your sins away,”
McTague said.
Sinners followed McTague
wherever he held Mass, whether
in containers or trailers. He
walked gangways, had services on
vessels, ran Alcoholics Anony-
mous meetings and preached
calm amid chaos. In 2002, a pre-
fabricated chapel was built with
money from John LoBue, the
founder of Foreign Automotive
Preparation Service. Stained-glass
windows depicted Jesus at sea.
When Corbett arrived in 2005, his
long hair, black leather jacket,
penchant to drink more than sac-
ramental wine and fluency in portpatois endeared him to dockwork-
ers.
“People are searching for mean-
ing in their work,” he said. “They
have to understand their work is
holy. When Jesus called his apos-
tles, every single one of them was
working. No one was praying in
the church.”
Then, in 2012, Hurricane Sandy
flooded the chapel with 40 inches
of water; the congregation was
displaced once more. Corbett rei-
magined the space and arranged
for a marble altar — imported
from Italy — to be displayed at the
front. He placed a wooden taber-
nacle shaped like a ship in the
center and rigged a pulley system
to suspend a candle over it. When
the building vibrates because of
truck traffic, the candle swings
occasionally.
“No matter how loud it is during
the consecration, I hear nothing,”
said Liam Rogers, a warehouse
operator. “All the noise fadesaway.”
Rogers, 63, first attended noon
Mass on a weekday in 2006. It was
just him and Corbett. Two of Rog-
ers’s brothers had died the previ-
ous year, and he cast about for
answers. He took to Corbett’s
plain-spoken approach that Rog-
ers called “bare-knuckle theology”
and has been a daily communi-
cant since.
“I’ve heard really intelligent
homilies, really impassioned
homilies, but never the realism
that John has,” Rogers said. “I feel
the true faith in that chapel.”
When the coronavirus pan-
demic began, Corbett received an
email from the Port Authority
saying that all maritime terminal
personnel were essential work-
ers, and he posted it on the glass
door in the foyer. He maintained
his ministry, but many worship-
ers stayed away. For the past two
summers, the blessing of the port
has not taken place, and he lost
eight regulars to retirement. The
congregation now numbers 25 to
30.
At night, Corbett sits in a reclin-
er in the chapel and pulls up a
blanket. Upon request, he visits
vessels to celebrate morning Mass
and responds to emergencies. A
few years ago, Jimmy Petrocelli, a
third-generation longshoreman
who has been coming to the cha-
pel for 43 years, had a worker in
his shop who lost a hand while
changing cables on a crane 180
feet above the dock. The injured
employee requested a priest’s
anointment before surgery. Cor-
bett rushed to University Hospi-
tal.
“Father’s just as important as an
ambulance to me,” Petrocelli said.
Corbett seeks balance at thistime of year. On the first day of
Hanukkah, a congregant
brought a menorah that his girl-
friend, whose family is both Jew-
ish and Catholic, donated to the
chapel. Corbett lit a candle all
eight days and featured the me-
norah by the tabernacle. Last
week, a lawyer who sells Christ-
mas trees on the side dropped
one off. Corbett relishes the sea-
son. On the third Sunday of Ad-
vent, he dressed in traditional
pink vestments. He smiled on the
altar.
“Is this my color or what?” he
said.
In street clothes, he drives a
silver pickup truck with a yellow
light on top through the port’s
busy lanes, past a greasy-spoon
luncheonette and beyond a gate
by a former Singer sewing ma-
chine factory. It is a waterfront lot
next to a warehouse with broken
windows, and he noses onto a
rocky ledge between concrete
blocks, where he eyes red-hull
ships beneath the Bayonne Bridge
and prays the rosary.
“Even on a miserable day,
there’s something about being
near the water that I enjoy,” he
said. “It could be stormy, middle of
winter, but I’d feel peaceful.”
Serenity is fleeting. During
noon Mass that day, worshipers
looking through stained glass
could see the silhouette of trucks
speeding to and from the port.
When a big rig hit a bump outside,
the chapel shook; plane engines
roared at the airport.
As Corbett prepared to distrib-
ute the Eucharist, Moni an-
nounced the next hymn. It was
No. 305 in the seasonal songbook:
“Silent Night.”
[email protected]Catholic chapel in Newark is an ‘oasis in the middle of an industrial desert’
YANA PASKOVA FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
People attend Sunday Mass at Stella Maris, a Catholic chapel in
Newark near the shipping containers at Port Newark.Stella Maris offers peace
for longshoremen and
‘bare-knuckle theology’BY DIANA KRUZMAN
columbus, ohio — Chief Glen-
na Wallace spent the summer
solstice this past June walking
the narrow asphalt path that en-
circles Serpent Mound, a low,
serpentine wall of earth built by
her ancestors hundreds or even
thousands of years ago.
Wallace, who leads the Eastern
Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, was
joined by Chief Ben Barnes of the
Shawnee Tribe, and the two
talked to crowds of visitors at the
historic site about their tribes’
connections to the mound and
the 19th-century policies that
forced them out of the area.
“We presented programs to let
people know that the tribes still
exist, the people still exist,” Wal-
lace told Religion News Service in
a recent phone call.
As they spoke, the sounds of
flute music and a “Native Ameri-
can-style” drum demonstration
filtered through the air from the
nearby Soaring Eagle Retreat,
where people had gathered to
commemorate the solstice with
crystal workshops and a presen-
tation by a local Bigfoot investiga-
tor and other speakers who sug-
gested that aliens or giants had
built the mound.
Southern Ohio is home to more
than 70 earthworks constructed
by the Indigenous Adena and
Hopewell cultures. These struc-
tures are still important to their
descendants — the Shawnee,
Eastern Shawnee, Miami and
Delaware people, who were
pushed out of the area 200 years
ago by White American settlers.
Some of the structures were built
as burial mounds, and others
functioned as astronomical ob-
servatories or ritual or religious
structures.
But the mounds have also tak-
en on significance for other spirit-
ual groups. Terri Rivera, who has
been bringing people to celebrate
equinoxes and solstices at Ser-
pent Mound for a decade, thinks
the site should be open to anyone
who sees it as a sacred place.
“To me, it’s a real healing spot,”
Rivera said on a visit to the
mound in November. “I think
people were probably drawn here
because of the energy fields.”
Theories about the mounds’
origins have also led to attacks
from fringe evangelical Chris-
tians who see them as unholy.
Tribal leaders have responded by
educating locals about the
mounds and working with
groups such as Ohio History Con-
nection, the nonprofit organiza-
tion that manages Serpent
Mound and other mounds
throughout Ohio, to ensure that
they are respected.
“We believe that some of the
activities that have occurred
there in the past are in direct
violation of our beliefs,” Wallace
said. “And so we’re asking that our
practices not be violated.”
Their efforts are part of a larger
battle for access to sacred sites,
from mountains in Arizona to
rivers in North Dakota, aimed at
fending off developers or govern-
ment agencies to preserve the
physical integrity directly linked
to their spiritual value.
The federal government is
sometimes a partner and some-
times not. In Ohio, the UnitedStates is working to have nine
Ohio earthworks, including Ser-
pent Mound, added to UNESCO’s
World Heritage list, a move that
would provide additional re-
sources to safeguard the mounds.
Interest from practitioners of
alternative faiths is also a mixed
blessing. Although New Agers of-
ten share a belief in Native Ameri-
can sites’ spiritual power, they
have sometimes caused damage.
In 2012, a group called Unite the
Collective, whose members iden-
tified themselves as “Light War-
riors,” buried hundreds of orgon-
ites — balls of crystals and resin,
often made in muffin tins — at
Serpent Mound in an attempt to
focus the earth’s vibrations.
Sites such as Serpent Mound
have served as gathering places
for New Age spiritual practitio-
ners since the 1987 Harmonic
Convergence, when believers
congregated on a day they be-
lieved was auspicious according
to the Mayan calendar. The New-
ark Earthworks, about 40 min-utes east of Columbus, have also
drawn attention for supposedly
being built along ley lines —
invisible gridlines that channel
“earth energies.”
In 2011, Serpent Mound was
featured on an episode of the
History Channel show “Ancient
Aliens,” in which several people
speculated that the mound may
have been used as a landing site
by aliens. (Rivera’s husband, Tom
Johnson, appeared as a guest on
the show, saying he had heard
such stories.)
And the day before the winter
solstice last December, Dave
Daubenmire, a conservative ac-
tivist and leader of Pass the Salt
Ministries in Hebron, Ohio, led a
group to Serpent Mound to per-
form a prayer to cast demons out
of the site. Daubenmire said in a
Facebook video that he believed
Ohio’s earthworks were built by
Nephilim, a race of giants some
say are the offspring of fallen
angels and human women.
For many, these claims echothe racist “Moundbuilder
myth,” which credits the
mounds’ construction to an an-
cient White race — an idea used
by 19th-century politicians to
justify the expulsion of Native
American tribes from their
lands.
Daubenmire’s group was met
by protesters from the American
Indian Movement of Ohio, al-
though the organization is not
sanctioned by the official Ameri-
can Indian Movement.
Rivera criticized both Unite
the Collective and Pass the Salt
Ministries, maintaining that the
mounds provide an opportunity
for people with different beliefs
to come together, provided they
respect the site.
“One of our sayings for our
events is: all nations, all races, all
relationships,” said Rivera, who
describes herself as having Native
American ancestry but is not a
member of a recognized tribe. “So
it’s time to just quit dividing. Just
say, ‘Hey, let’s just all be friends.’ ”
But Wallace said that belief in
the mounds’ spiritual power can
lead people to disrespect the
mounds’ history and sacredness.
She has seen people using drugs
at Serpent Mound on the winter
solstice and heard of people hav-
ing sex there, believing it would
boost their fertility. Even the
drumming that took place at the
last solstice event, although char-
acterized by organizers as “cer-
emonial,” seemed disrespectful to
Wallace — more like a “rock
concert” than an act of reverence.
Joe Laycock, an assistant pro-
fessor of religious studies at Texas
State University, said interest in
Native American traditions goes
back to the Spiritualist move-
ment of the 1800s, when settlers’
guilt over the displacement anddestruction of Indigenous com-
munities may have driven them
to obsession. It boomed in the
1960s, as alternative spiritual
practitioners began integrating
“pseudo-native” folklore.
The New Age movement’s syn-
cretism — what Laycock calls a
“cultic milieu” of different spirit-
ual beliefs and practices — is
evident in the gathering Rivera
organized for the winter solstice
this month. The plans included a
Peruvian healing ceremony, a
presentation by a psychic medi-
um and “animal communicator,”
ceremonial drumming, lessons in
“sacred geology” and traditional
Maori dance, or haka.
Not everyone who attends
these gatherings identifies as
New Age — including Rivera, who
said she’s broadly spiritual — but
this kind of big-tent approach is a
hallmark of the movement, Lay-
cock said.
This year, after input from
Wallace and Barnes, Ohio History
Connection began restricting
groups from gathering directly at
the mound, meaning Rivera’s Ser-
pent Mound Star Knowledge
Winter Solstice Peace Summit
was to take place six miles away
from Serpent Mound.
No matter their beliefs, visitors
to the mounds need to show
respect for the site’s spiritual
nature, said John Low, director of
the Newark Earthworks Center
and an enrolled citizen of the
Pokagon Band of Potawatomi In-
dians. The mounds are no less
sacred than a church or a mosque,
Low said, although their sacred-
ness is not bound by what is built
on the land.
“The earth which they are built
upon was sacred, is sacred, will
always be sacred,” Low said.
— Religion News ServiceSacred Native American site in Ohio becomes a religious flash point
OHIO HISTORY CONNECTION
Serpent Mound in Ohio is one of several earthworks in the area
built by Native Americans cultures. It draws many types of visitors.Groups seek to protect
Serpent Mound from
disrespect and damageaddressing issues identified by
the report but disagreed with
some conclusions.
“Many of the DJJ specific rec-
ommendations are things that
we agree with and have been
working on,” Davy wrote in an
email. “Progress is noted in some
areas and we continually report
on areas that need more work.”
With the precipitous drop in
the population of the juvenile
justice system, the report found
that the state’s detention centers
are now only 30 percent full and
that officials have not moved to
close facilities, so costs per juve-
nile in the system have ballooned
as a result. Virginia’s juvenile
detention centers have more beds
than any other state in the region.
JLARC oversees state agencies
in Virginia and in November
2020 directed staff to write the
report.
[email protected]and defense attorneys, who said
youths were getting substandard
legal representation. Those inter-
viewed said the problems were
most prevalent with court-ap-
pointed attorneys, who are paid
far less than in other states. Some
attorneys did not have a firm
grasp on juvenile law and some-
times spent little time with clients
before representing them in court.
The report found a nearly
70 percent recidivism rate
among youths released from de-
tention centers around Virginia,
leading the authors to conclude
rehabilitation programs over-
seen by the state’s Department of
Juvenile Justice (DJJ) weren’t
particularly effective. Similarly,
the report concluded the DJJ
could do a better job of helping
youth offenders return to com-
munities.
Greg Davy, a spokesman for
the DJJ, said the department issome counties — including Ar-
lington locally — than others,
according to the report. Law
enforcement officials also were
more likely to refer Black youths
to the juvenile justice system
than schools and probation and
parole officers.
The report recommended that
the General Assembly imple-
ment more training require-
ments aimed at combating the
racial disparity issue, but Slater
said the issue called for a more
systemic examination.
Slater encouraged officials to
“put in place some fail safes from
the police and their arrest pro-
cedures, to court services send-
ing the arrest petition, on to
judges and how they are treating
kids in the courtroom, and finally
to the prosecutors and defense
attorneys.”
The authors of the report also
interviewed judges, prosecutorsThe report’s findings were not
all negative: The authors con-
cluded that a plan to transform
juvenile justice put in place by
the Virginia legislature in 2016
had reduced the number of
youths in the system and cut
recidivism rates for low-risk of-
fenders.
Valerie Slater, executive direc-
tor of Rise for Youth, a group that
advocates for teens in the juve-
nile justice system, said she was
particularly troubled by the ra-
cial disparities the report found.
The report concluded Black
youths were 2.5 times as likely
over the past decade to be placed
in the juvenile justice system, a
trend that held true for misde-
meanors and felonies.
The racial disparity exists in
every jurisdiction across the
state, but it was far higher in
JUVENILE FROM B1
In Va., more Black youths referred to juvenile justice
BY MARTIN WEIL
It was Christmas Eve on Friday,
and in weather terms it seemed to
suggest a calm before Christmas.
Particularly as daylight waned
and evening drew on in Washing-
ton, calmness prevailed aloft.
Around 2 p.m., as the gray over-
cast spread across the afternoon
sky, the National Weather Service
reported a wind of 3 mph.
But even that modest quantity
of motion in the air around us
seemed to vanish as time went on.
As evening neared, and with it
one of the most celebrated nights
of the calendar, the Night Before
Christmas, the atmosphere ap-
peared to meet the moment.
At 3 p.m., 4 p.m. and 5 p.m., theWeather Service reported that in
Washington winds were calm.
It was as if the air, in its notable
stillness, offered a soothing and
stabilizing counterpoint the tur-
bulence of life at a time of the
coronavirus pandemic.
Not all was either overcast or
totally calm Saturday. Morning
skies showed a more vivid mien.
Early on the Day before Christ-
mas, thin, white clouds seemed to
create lacy traceries as they criss-
crossed a sky of pure blue.
Connoisseurs of crockery and
tableware might even have lik-
ened the sight to a setting of Wedg-
wood china, with a bit of morning
breeze constantly rearranging the
pattern.
[email protected]THE DISTRICTThis Christmas Eve,
a calm climate prevailed