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Yet Heilman, Father Thomas Haggerty, the pastor of St. Michael's, Bob Walsh, Joe Montalto--community leaders who work in different ways for Sunset Park --all agree that the center is the social engine of the neighborhood. They remember that in 1978, Sunset Park, though designated a poverty area in the 1960s, had not yet reached the point of deterioration of the South Bronx and the now destitute Bushwick section of Brooklyn. There was still a chance to pull the neighborhood back from disintegration. The center is credited for the beginnings of recovery. Mary Paul and Geraldine do not deny this, since it is demonstrably true. At the same time they are made visibly uncomfortable by any focus on themselves as individuals, and will, when so threatened, immediately draw one's attention to the others in the community and to their staff members, all of whom the sisters prize: Carol Heiney-Gonzalez, Maryanne Sabatino, Anna Nalevanko, Anita Cleary, John Kixmiller, who runs the after- school program at P.S. 314; Tom Randall; Julie Stein Brockway, who leads the theater workshop; Diana Hart-Johnson, the woman preparing the Nutcracker show.
"They are there for the people. They certainly don't love everyone of their clients. It's hard to love wife batterers and child molesters. But they have this basic, nonjudgmental quality of acceptance."
The phone rings in the convent. Mary Paul must see a woman whose six-year-old and 1 1/2-year-old children were discovered on a fire escape at 4 a.m. The woman's excuse was that she had to go buy milk. "Of course, it isn't true. The woman undoubtedly has a pattern of leaving her children in hazardous situations. Is she going to trust us enough to allow us to help?
"You wonder why the staff does this work. People who are in what we call the helping professions are curious. I think they may feel something missing in their lives. There can be a lot of ego in this profession, a lot of vicarious fulfillment. One wants to see oneself as a good and giving person. There is nothing wrong with that, but it can't be the only goal. The ultimate goal must be a change in the system in which both the giver and the taker live. Life is made better generally. I bet if you had time to interview every one of our clients, many would not attribute changes that occurred to us at all. Good things happened, and they believe they were their achievements. In many ways they were.
"People call us a charity organization. I don't like the word charity, except in the sense of caritas, love. Love is not based on marking people up by their assets and virtues. Love is based on the sense of the mystery of the person. Here we have the privilege of meeting people in via, as it is said, on the way. They're on a journey. The gratitude I feel is that I am able to see this particular person at this particular time. Yet the person remains an unfathomable mystery, and is going somewhere I will never know."
V CENTER FOR FAMILY LIFE
THEATER WORKSHOP