St. Thomas no More? Archdiocese to end services at Ashburn church next month

The faithful have celebrated Easter Mass at St. Thomas More Catholic Church ever since the first crop of single-family homes pushed back the prairie, creating the spanking new Eisenhower era neighborhood of Ashburn.

That tradition will end this Easter Sunday.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago told the congregation last week — on Palm Sunday, no less — that the 67-year-old edifice will hold its last liturgy on May 25 and will no longer function as a church after that.

If there's any good news to be found, it's that the brick-and-limestone church at 8100 S. California Ave. remains in remarkably fine condition, and will be put to new uses instead of being demolished or mothballed.

Certainly, the shrinking archdiocese, forced to close and consolidate churches for the last 35 years, has had bigger losses. (You know, I'm still salty that the archdiocese wrecked St. Basil, a Byzantine beauty at 1850 W. Garfield Blvd., back in 1998.)

Still, one has to lament a bit that with its modernist, yet elegant and reverent interiors — really among the best of the archidocese's postwar churches — St. Thomas More will be no longer used for the main purpose for which it was designed.

"We're really fighting to keep it open [as a church]," longtime parishioner William MacDonald said Thursday while watching the worship space being prepared for Easter. "But it's up to the archdiocese."

Catholic church goes mod

Built in 1958, St. Tommy More — parishioners still call it that — drew more than 1,200 people to weekly services during the good years in the 20th century.

Worshippers filled the ranks of modernist oak pews. Natural light enters through mosaic windows, imported from France, that bear abstract designs.

And the story of the actual saint, Thomas More, is told in a series of stained glass windows that ring the ovoid worship space, starting with his birth in 1478, all the way to his beheading by Henry VIII in 1535.

"We're the only church in the archdiocese and probably in the country [that's Catholic] that has a picture of [Anglican] King Henry VIII," MacDonald said.

Designwise, St. Thomas More is totally unlike the revivalist, Old World-inspired styles that marked Chicago Catholic church architecture just a few decades earlier. (Nor was it sleek, steel-and-glass-style Miesian architecture either.)

And the style change was not by chance, said Joseph Valerio, a Chicago architect who years ago developed an eye for the city's postwar Catholic churches and their history.

Valerio said a succession of Chicago cardinals beginning with the Rev. George Mundelein in the 1930s through the Rev. Albert Meyer in the 1960s wanted to move Catholic churches away from Gothic and neo-classical styles in favor of designs that better expressed openness .

"I think that attitude gave license to the architects to really go with all these modernist designs," Valerio said. "You wouldn't think the Catholic Church would get involved in this kind of philosophical transition over a relatively short period of time. But it did."

At St. Thomas More, the result is a church that made use of light, space, materials and art to create a new kind of place of worship.

Scores of modernist churches, many done in the same vein as St. Thomas More, sprang up in the region during the 1950s and 1960s.

Barry & Kay, architects of St. Thomas More and its parish buildings, designed St. Ferdinand Church at 5900 W. Barry Ave. in Belmont Cragin in 1956.

Another standout from the era is St. Priscilla at 6949 W. Addison St. in Dunning.

"The key thing here is that there was a professional organization [the Catholic Church] that knew how to build things, which is important because that's a good client," Valerio said. "And they had architects who were skilled and anxious to step away from traditional designs."

Old church to get new purpose

Since its heyday, St. Thomas More's membership has shrank to about 300.

And Ashburn, which had been predominantly white and Catholic, now has a largely Black (and non-Catholic) population.

MacDonald said the church has a small Black membership, however.

An archdiocese spokesperson said St. Thomas More will will be used by the Black Catholic Initiative and the Augustus Tolton Spirituality Institute as "a resource, gathering space and hub for outreach ministries."

There are no plans to alter the building or remove its art, artifacts or pews, she said.

"The plan is to use the space as an opportunity for faith-learning, faith sharing and faith exploration," the spokesperson said.

"I'm not against the idea of changing or bringing in new influences," said MacDonald. But he said ending religious services there "is a mistake."

Lee Bey is the Sun-Times architecture critic.