Report presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts.

South of the Colorado River in the lower southeastern corner of Austin lies the somewhat isolated and withdrawn community of Montopolis. Traditionally forgotten or ignored by city hall and the more affluent portion of the city, the residents of this area were until recently caught in a seemingly endless cycle of ignorance, unemployment, and poverty. Less than a decade ago, Montopolis was characterized by unpaved streets, few job opportunities, inadequate housing, and no public transportation. Inevitably, the area also hosted the highest crime and high school dropout rates in Austin. By 1972, there were paved streets with lights, new low-income housing, and a bus transportation system, and. a negligible degree of crime and high school dropouts. Most impressively, the percentage of residents on welfare had dropped from 75 % in 1964 to less than 8 % in 1972.

The story behind this transformation is the history of Dolores Parish, which began as a mission when Montopolis was still a rural farming area. It was the Holy Cross Fathers stationed at Dolores who witnessed the decline of the community into an urban slum and who realized in the early 1960‘s that municipal neglect and public apathy were going to continue if the residents of Montopolis were not motivated to rehabilitate the area themselves.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that even in the Twentieth Century a religious faith and dedicated leadership can play positive roles in solving the problems of society. When a church such as Dolores finally realizes that its responsibilities include not only its own fellowship, but also all of society around it, then, and only then, is it prepared to be of any truly effectual social influence.

This work has been prepared under the direction of Professor Robert C.  Cotner of the University of Texas in Austin, to whom this author owes much gratitude for his valuable assistance. Appreciation is also due to Professor Richard Pells who acted as second reader for this report.
 
 
 

According to the Official Catholic Directory the Church of Nuestra Senora de Siete Dolores was established in September of 1953. However, the origins of the Dolores parish can he traced back to the 1930’s when Austin was a rapidly expanding urban center.

With a population of almost 73,000 in 1936, Austin has lost much of its earlier simplicity. The growing population had stimulated modernization in the form of busy streets, congested housing, and new industries,  One of the few truly rural regions left within the Austin area was the Montopolis community located on the south side of the Colorado River. This area contained only a few isolated farms connected by dirt roads and gravel paths. Most of the families were recent arrivals from Mexico, but a few poor white and Negro families were also trying to earn a living growing spinach and lettuce.

Montopolis had long been neglected not only by the Austin municipal government, but also by the various religious denominations of the City. Nearby Garfield had only a small Catholic chapel known as Our Lady of Guadalupe, but by 1930 it had been abandoned for many years.

In 1938, the Reverend James W. Donahue, C.S.C., the recently retired Superior General of the Holy Cross Fathers arrived in Austin. He immediately recognized that Montopolis, though predominantly Catholic, had not been visited by a priest in years. Father Donahue and Father Frank Weber of the Holy Cross Church in Austin early in 1939 began visiting regularly the Catholic families of Montopolis. They baptized many of the children and blessed the Catholic couples who had been married earlier by civil law.

Father Donahue had been a 1ong-time friend of Father John J. Sigstein who together with Bishop John F. Noll had founded the Victory Noll Catechists. Though this friendship, Father Donahue obtained the services of three catechists in 1939. The Sisters stayed in Montopolis six months and, using a car provided by Father Donahue, compiled an excellent census of the Catholic population in the area.

In 1939 Archbishop Arthur J. Droesaarts of San Antonio acted upon the suggestion of Father Donahue and granted the Holy Cross Fathers jurisdiction over the area sough of the Colorado River including Buda, Creedmoor, Garfield, and Montopolis.  Archbishop Droessarts stipulated that a mission system should be devised to reach the 3,000 Catholic parishioners spread over the 2,000 square mile region.

The Holy Cross Fathers decided to build a church on each of the four main arteries leading out of Austin on the south side of the Colorado River. The mother parish was to be San Jose, located on the Fredericksburg Highway. The other three missions were to be Mission San Francisco on the Lockhart Highway, Mission Santa Cruz on the San Antonio Highway, and, to serve the Montopolis community, Mission Nuestra Senora La Luz on the Bastrop Highway.

In 1940 Father Alfred Mendez was appointed as the first pastor of the proposed San Jose Church and its missions. Of Spanish descent, Father Mendez had been born in Chicago and was ordained a priest of the Holy Cross Congregation after attending Notre Dame University. His only station before Austin bad been missionary service in Georgetown, Texas.

Father Thomas Culhane, C.S.C., was appointed Father Mendez’s assistant, and together they began regularly visiting the Catholics in the Montopolis area. Mass was said each Sunday in the Norwood School. A first communion class was conducted in 1940.

By early December of 1941 San Jose was finished and Missions Santa Cruz and San Francisco were nearing completion. The manual labor had been done almost entirely by the parishioners themselves, and all the churches were formally dedicated on December 14, 1941. Before plans for the fourth and final mission, La Luz in Montopolis, could be formulated, World War II intervened and the efforts of the Holy Cross Fathers were needed elsewhere.

The war brought startling changes to the quiet Montopolis community. In 1942, the United States Government bought up most of the farming district near Montopolis area. Furthermore, many of the employees of Bergstrom found Montopolis a convenient place to build homes. Many of the original residents of Montopolis began opening small businesses because with their sons in the service they could no longer operate their farms without hiring outside help.

With this influx of population, predominantly Catholic, the need for an established church became imperative. Norwood School had been absorbed by Bergstrom, and Fathers Mendez and Culhane had to say Mass each Sunday in the homes of various parishioners.  The large homes of Felix Galabis, Luz Ojeda, and Leon Arias were used most frequently.

As soon as the war ended Father Mendez accelerated plans to build a church in Montopolis. In early 1946 he purchased a plot of land near the point where the Bastrop Highway and Montopolis Drive met. Father Mendez selected this site partially for its commercial value. He hoped that if the church ever had to be sold. This lot could be used for a business of some kind.

Work on the church began immediately. It was entirely financed by a $5,000 donation from the O‘Connor family of Philadelphia given through the Catholic Church Extension Fund. The structure was designed by Austin architect Alexander Fehr and local products were utilized in its construction. Built of native limestone and cedar logs, they used a railroad ties from the defunct Austin trolley system and discarded telegraph poles as supports. Father Mendez and the parishioners of Montopolis built the church themselves with very little outside labor.

A large art-glass window placed at one end of the church was the gift of the Agredan Society of Detroit It was dedicated to the Mother Mary of Agreda, “Our Lady in Blue,” a Spanish nun who through the power of bi-location instructed the Indians of Central Texas before the coming of the missionaries.

In his dedication Archbishop Peter Lucey emphasized that the imperative need of the diocese was for more catechists who could go door to door in the poorer sections instructing the people in their religion. An address was also given in Spanish by Father Mendez.  The church was officially christened Nuestra Senora La Luz after a famous shrine in Spain. Over four hundred people attended the dedication including most of the sixty parish families, , Rt. Rev. John Robling of New Braunfels, Rev. Bernard Popp, and Holy Cross Fathers Edwin Bauer, Patrick Dolan, and Joseph McAllister.

The newly established church immediately conducted a local census and reported a total of eighty-four families living in the Montopolis area. Of the approximately 430 residents --practically all of them had moved into the community since 1943.

Catechism classes were begun on October 9, 1946, with 12 children attending. As parish families returned from cotton-picking the enrollment increased to 96 with 66 children. attending regularly. Two Sisters of the Holy Cross Order, assisted by 3 girls from St. Mary’s Academy, were the instructors.

The rapid population growth in Montopolis had led to serious over-crowding in the
public schools. Before Christmas of 1946, Father Mendez contacted. the Colorado School District
and offered the use of the La Luz Mission during the week for classroom purposes.

Beginning in January of 1947, two teachers held classes daily in the mission for their seventy students in grades one through four. A new heating system was installed before the end of the winter financed partially by the Colorado School District.

1948 was a year of considerable change for the newly established church. Most of importance, Austin Became a separate diocese with Louis J. Reicher as the new bishop.  In this same year, Father Mendez was transferred back to Notre Dame. His successor, Father Peter Mueller, was in Austin only a few months before he was sent to a parish in Chile.  In the fall of 1948 the new pastor of San Jose, Father Joseph Houser, arrived. with an assistant, Father Charles Delaney. Although officially stationed at San Jose, Father Delaney was assigned by Father Houser as the resident pastor of La Luz Mission.

In late 1949 when La Luz was just beginning to operate efficiently, Father Delaney was approached by Bishop Reicher with the suggestion that the church be moved. elsewhere. Bishop Reicher felt that La Luz was dangerously near the highway, considering the number of small children who attended Mass there every Sunday. Father Delaney was advised to contact Andrew Roche who had recently purchased ten acres further down on Montopolis Drive.  Bishop Reicher also suggested that the name of the church be changed. He personally favored Nuestra Senora de Siete Dolores, or Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows.

Plans for the building of a new church were put into effect immediately. The church of La Luz was sold to an Austin business firm who demolished the mission and erected  a washeteria in its place. Father Delaney purchased the lot owned by Andrew Rocha in the 1100 block of Montopolis Drive. The new church, Nuestra Senora de Siete Dolores, was completed during the summer of 1953 and dedicated on September 15, and announced that Montopolis would no longer be a mission district of San Jose, but rather a separate, independent pariah with Father Delaney as pastor.

Father Houser celebrated. the Solemn Mass with Rev. Joseph Troy, C .S .C., as deacon, Rev. Prank Oclaiyola, O.M.I., celebrated the Benediction of the Most Blessed. Sacrament.  Other priests in attendance were Rev. Fathers O’Brien, C.S.C., Sullivan, C.S.C., and Dayberry, C.S.C.  Father Nicholas Diez, OMI was also in attendance. The Holy Cross Brothers from the Scholasticate at St. Edward. 's University served. at the altar and sang hymns.

The crowd, which overflowed the church, included Father Delaney’s parents, sister and niece. A generous buffet supper was served after the ceremony to the many visiting priests.

The church of the new Dolores pariah was designed in Spanish style with a tile roof and stucco walls. Forty feet by 127 feet, the church can seat five hundred people. The beautiful marble altar was the gift of Mrs. Thomas Connelly, sister of Rev. Edwin Bauer, procurator of the Holy Cross Home Mission, in memory of her husband.

The church had hardly been finished when Father Delaney began plans for a school. In 1954 the school opened with an enrollment of’ approximately two hundred students in first grade through eighth. The teachers were predominantly missionaries of the Sacred Heart from San Antonio. Most of the children were from Montopolis, but many also came from Bergstrom Air Force Base.

The mid-fifties were uneventful years for the Dolores parish. By 1956, there were approximately 2,000 people living in Montopolis but the area was not growing economically, Few businesses had been established, and the welfare roles had increased faster than the rate of population. There was slight sense of pride in the community, and the cheap houses built during the forties had deteriorated into roach-infested shacks.

Father Elmer V. Rupp, C.S.C., served as assistant to Father Delaney from October of 1956 until July of 1957. Remembering his impressions of’ Montopolis, Father Rupp remarked later: “Shacks, that’s all there was to Montopolis, just shacks. I didn’t feel that either the Dolores Parish or the Mexicans in the parish could, or every would, amount to anything."

In 1957, Father Delaney, having completed his church and school, was transferred to Chile to do missionary work among the poor. It was Father Delaney 's replacement, Rev. James Donnelly C.S.C., who witnessed the final deterioration of Montopolis from a poor, neglected neighborhood into a brutal, urban slum.

The stream of’ migration from East Austin on the north side of the river into Montopolis accelerated during the late fifties. Most of the new residents were unemployed Mexicans and Negroes who found that prices were lower in Montopolis than anywhere else in Austin.  Soon every possible habitable dwelling in Dolores parish was occupied,including deserted shacks, chicken coops, barns, and abandoned filling stations.

Many families, direct from Mexico, were also moving into the area to join friends and. relatives, There immigrants arrived for the moat part illiterate and jobless. Few bothered to even enroll their children in school. With this influx of population, the atmosphere of’ the area took a turn for the worse as the youths of the neighborhood began to organize themselves into gangs divided by racial and ethnic backgrounds. Crime has been on the steady increase for years, but now robberies, assaults, and beatings were accompanied by knifings and gang wars. The number of murders nearly tripled. Soon there juvenile gangs, composed mostly of high school dropouts, controlled the Montopolis community. The older people lived in terror and. submission. They were afraid to report the activities of these youths for fear their children, wives, or mothers would be attacked, brutally knifed, or even killed.

Montopolis had rapidly acquired all the attributes of a classic urban slum: the crime and high school drop-out rates were the highest in Austin, housing was poor and. inadequate adequate, street lights and storm sewers were practically non-existent along the unpaved streets, and job opportunities were few. Seventy-five percent of the people were on welfare, and the average level of education was approximately the third grade. All these problems were intensified by Montopolis 's isolation and lack of public transportation.

In 1962, Father Donnelly was replaced by Rev. Fred Underwood, C.S.C. The arrival of this young, energetic Holy Cross priest marks the pivotal point in the history of the Dolores parish. Father Underwood was born on July 23, 1923, and grew up in his native Evansville, Indiana. He found his first job as a water boy for the Tri-State Contracting Company while still a student a Reitz Memorial High School. Fascinated by the construction business, he began working full-time as a job estimator after his graduation in 1941. He quickly rose to superintendent and then to foreman and was eventually named a vice-president.

World War II interrupted Father Underwood’s rapidly advancing career. He enlisted. in the Air Corps, received a commission, and was stationed in Saipan. Before long he had gained a wide-spread reputation as an ace bomber pilot. He successfully flew his B-29 countless combat missions over Tokyo, Nagasaki, and other Japanese cities.

In 1945, Father Underwood returned to Evansville disillusioned and frustrated. The war had convinced him of  the tremendous need for missionary work throughout the world to bring faith and hope in God to all peoples. With these convictions, he decided to join the Congregation of Holy Cross. Apparently his experience was not unique for when he entered Notre Dame in 1947 he discovered that half of his classmates studying for the priesthood had seen action in either Europe or the Pacific. Father Underwood graduated in 1952 and completed his theological studies at the Catholic University in Washington, D.C. In June of 1956 he became a fully ordained member of the Holy Cross Congregation.

His first assignment was as Chaplain of the St. Joseph’s Boys School in Washington, D .C.  He soon was transferred to St. Joseph’s parish in Killeen, Texas. Upon his arrival in Killeen, Father Underwood found his parish school closed because there were no teachers available. To remedy this situation, Father Underwood organized the Volunteer Teachers Service.  He visited Catholic colleges and universities inviting seniors in education to volunteer for one year of service in Catholic schools. Through the wide response to his program, Father Underwood was able to staff not only his own school, but also others located from Alaska to Chile.

In 1962, Father Underwood was transferred to Dolores. The deplorable state of the parish, which former pastors had accepted as inevitable and irreversible, served only to stimulate the natural energy, optimism, and ambition of a man such as Father Underwood. He immediately embarked the Dolores parish on a massive program of reform and rehabilitation.

Father Underwood spent several weeks just studying Montopolis. He recognized the basic problems of unemployment, juvenile delinquency, inadequate housing, no public transportation, and poor education, but he also identified the underlying religious and racial tensions created by the diverse population. Of approximately 5,000 people, ten percent were Protestant Anglos, thirty percent were Baptist Negroes, and sixty percent were Catholic Mexican-American. In the bitterness and hatred inspired by their poverty, the groups had turned on each other and created a still further problem community-- non-communication within the community.

 Dedicated to helping all the people of Montopolis--not just Catholics--Father Underwood ranked a community center as his first step toward rehabilitating the area.  A community center would encourage the young people to get off the streets and to participate in organized recreational activities. He felt it would also be a place where people of all racial and religious backgrounds could meet and discuss their problems together.

In 1963, Father Underwood applied to the City of Austin for financial aid in establishing the center. He was coldly refused and given only a vague promise of perhaps some assistance in the future. Fortunately, Bishop Reicher approved of the project and agreed to co-sign a loan from the Capitol National Bank for $150,000. A site was selected for the building on church property directly across Montopolis Drive from Dolores chapel.

Aided. by a group of parishioners and his own experience in the construction business, Father Underwood completed the center without delay. A second loan of $75,000 was approved during the building when additional classrooms and air-conditioning were incorporated into the original plans. The Montopolis Community Center was finished in May of 1964.

Upon the center's completion, Father Underwood petitioned the Austin Parks and Recreation Department for funds to help furnish and operate the facilities.  His request was denied, and Father Underwood realized that the money would have to come from within the parish itself.  Several moneymaking programs such as dances, dinners, and breakfasts were initiated, and by summer the Montopolis Community Center was operating successfully without any outside assistance.

Besides such recreational activities as basketball, volleyball, baseball, and weight lifting, the center also offered arts and crafts classes for all age groups.  As expected, the center became a meeting place for area residents of all backgrounds. Within three months of the center‘s opening, the crime rate in Montopolis dropped eight percent although crime was on the rise throughout the rest of Austin.

With his typical compulsion for efficiency, Father Underwood decided that a formal organization was needed to direct the community center's numerous proposed projects. On April 29, 1965, the Montopolis Community Center, Inc, received its charter. Still in operation this is a non-denominational, non-profit corporation devoted to the development of Montopolis and especially to the welfare of its impoverished youth and adults.

One of the first projects Initiated by the center was a Day Care program. Originally funded by the Office of Economic Opportunity, the program provided pre-school training for three, four, and five year olds. This program not only allowed mothers to go to work to supplement inadequate family incomes, but also was of immense benefit to the children. With a staff supplied by Head Start, many of the children were exposed to functional English for the first time in their lives.  This pre-school instruction equipped the Mexican-American children with the skills needed to compete successfully when they entered first grade. In 1969 the operation of this program was turned over to the Human Opportunities Corporation (H.O.C.)

In 1965, with, the help of a Federal Labor Department grant of $68,000, the community center began to sponsor the Montopolis Neighborhood. Youth Corps. The prime goal of this new project was the rehabilitation of the juvenile delinquents in the area. Originally only a one-year program, Father Underwood selected seventy-five of the community’s most hard-core core troublemakers. He simply went through the rectory’s “little black book” of the most needy and incorrigible. He deliberately sought out the gang members and drug users.

The teenagers drafted into the program were initially motivated to attend the training sessions by the promise of monetary reward. Father Underwood and his assistants realized that the only way to reach the youngsters was through the promise of a salary. It was agreed that $1.25 would be paid for every hour spent in training. The only rules of the program were simply to check your guns at the community center door, come to the training sessions sober, and do not sell drugs on church property.

The boys were trained in fields such as carpentry, electronics, automotive repair, truck driving, and janitorial work. The girls were prepared for positions such as secretaries, clerks, typists, receptionists, nurses’s aides, teacher aides, and food handlers.

Father Underwood also had ten of the enrollees take a parish census. Five teams of two teenagers each contacted every family in Montopolis in an effort to identify the individual needs of each family. Father Underwood then referred each family to the community agencies who could help then with their specific problems.

During the first few months, the program had to cope with several problems. Attendance at the Youth Corp training sessions was erratic, and paychecks were spent on alcohol and drugs. Gradually, however, the teenagers began to learn good working habits and respect for their supervisors. Seeing a friend. in jail or attending the funeral of a friend outside of the program who had been killed in a gang war also began to have a sobering effect. Eighty-two percent of’ the youths in this first program were rehabilitated and placed in jobs. The crime rate in Montopolis began a steady rate of’ decline.

A second grant from the Department of Labor provided for the continuation of the Neighborhood Youth Corps. Seventy-eight of the eighty boys in the 1967 program had police or juvenile court records. Sixty-six of these boys were rehabilitated and placed in jobs. The Labor Department had expected success with no more than thirty of the youths. According to Father Underwood,

    "Dolores was not looking for statistical success. If we had been we would have screened
    the youth for high motivation and almost complete high School education. We would
    have placed two hundred of’ them in jobs. But we screened for society’s rejects, the
    referrals from the juvenile courts and Gatesville Schools for Boys. Austin had no
    separate vocational school for boys, but we made our own in Montopolis."

By 1968 crime in Montopolis was disappearing. Most of the teenage gangs had broken up as
their leaders had discovered that it was more feasible economically to learn a trade at the center and take a steady job than it was to rob the local gas station once a month.

The Labor Department was so impressed with the change in Montopolis that it requested Dolores to extend its vocational and  educational to all of Austin the four surrounding counties. The community center. accepted this responsibility for one year, but then relinquished sponsorship to HOC in 1969. With the almost total absence of crime in Montopolis, Dolores felt it should concentrate its efforts elsewhere.

Another project was operating simultaneously with the Youth Corps program to improve conditions in Montopolis Isolation bad always been one of the parish's most basic problems. The area had never been serviced by a public bus line and, therefore, the jobs, clinics, various welfare agencies, employments office, and other facilities of central Austin had never been accessible to the car-less residents of Montopolis. In 1965, Father Underwood went to Chicago and returned to Dolores with an old army evacuation bus donated by the Holy Cross Congregation at Notre Dame. A bus system known Poverty Island Transportation or "PIT" was organized. The new bus system not only gave the people a chance to visit the clinics and and welfare agencies, but also allowed. them to seek work outside of the parish.

Officially operated. by the Montopolis Community Center, Inc., the bus system was the first of its kind, in the nation to be allotted funds from the office of Economic Opportunity. OEO National Director Sargeant Shriver took one of the first rides on the bus in February of 1966.

“PIT” proved. to be so successful that it had to be discontinued in 1970. The residents of Montopolis had used the bus service to find and keep better paying jobs. A steady income had allowed them to buy cars, thus virtually eliminating the need for a bus system. In August of 1971, a new transportation system was established on a much smaller scale by the Austin Model Cities program. Two fifteen-passenger mini-buses were allotted to Montopolis and other parts of East Austin not serviced by regular bus lines. The scheduled still operate on forty-five minute intervals carrying passengers from Montopolis through East Austin to the Safeway store area on 11th street, Brackenridge Hospital, various welfare agencies near downtown Austin, and back again.

In 1968, after solving the problems of crime and transportation, Father Underwood launched this attack on the housing situation in Montopolis. Plans were drawn up for Country Club Gardens, a low-cost housing project built on church property adjacent to the community center. Two administrative grants from the Moody Foundation of Galveston provided the initial financial backing, and University of Texas architectural students, under the supervision of Dr. Robert G. Mather, designed the entire project.

As of April 1972, two hundred homes had. been completed and sixty more were still under construction. Though a low-cost housing development, the houses themselves contain almost every convenience.  Each home includes air-conditioning, central heating, hooded ranges, concrete sidewalks and driveways, and landscaping. The one to five bedrooms units all have similar floor plans, but the different exteriors and masonry fronts provide individuality.  The house cannot cost the owner any more than $17,000.

Country Club Gardens is an official Federal Housing Administration Number 235 Housing Project, and the Housing Act of 1968 has made it possible for almost any resident of Montopolis to qualify for long term financing. With a down payment of $200.00, the monthly payments are computed on twenty percent of the family’s adjusted income . To qualify for one of these units in Country Club Gardens, a family of four would have to have a minimum yearly income of $6,210 after social security and $300.00 a year deduction for each child.  A counseling service had been developed to advise families on how to increase their income and “clean up" their credit to qualify the program.

The Country Club Gardens project has been a great success and most of the homes were sold before completion. The houses have been distributed with absolutely no racial or religious discrimination.

Several other projects have been organized by the Dolores parish in connection with Country Club Gardens. The community center offers courses in home buying and qualifying for FHA loans. Consumer education classes are also held to aid the new homeowners in properly and efficiently maintaining their new houses. The center has a warehouse where appliances and other items can be stored and building materials are manufactured.

A second-hand store has been established to provide clothing and furniture for large families at a nominal price. Since all the merchandise at the store is donated, all profits go into a fund to help the residents of Montopolis during emergencies. The Dolores-Cristo Rey Credit Union was founded in 1969 and loans money to the Dolores parishioners at a very low interest rate. This union has eliminated the “loan sharks” of Montopolis who charged exorbitant rates.

Other than Country Club Gardens, the most impressive program operated. by the Dolores parish is the private non-parochial community school. Established in 1969 and sponsored by the Montopolis Community Center, Inc., the school has made a special effort to help the Spanish-speaking children of the area. The students are taught by a form of the bi-lingual Montessori method which is designed to give each child individual attention,

The success of the program is evident by the high rate of attendance, lack of almost any disciplinary problems, and high academic achievement of nearly every child.

The school in 1972 had a tri-ethnic student body of a hundred forty-seven students in grades one through four. Plans are being implemented to add the fifth and sixth grades.

The school is funded by a $10 per student tuition, Health, Education and. Welfare Title I and VII funds are used solely for a remedial reading program which includes a full time remedial reading teacher and elaborate modern equipment. The school also operates a breakfast and lunch program subsidized by the Department of Agriculture. Hot breakfasts are available for a dime and lunches are 20 cents.

The Dolores parish also has organized an extensive program for the Montopolis children during their summer vacations. Funded by Model Cities and the Austin Parks and Recreation Department, the program offers basketball, boxing, swimming, and arts and crafts classes.

Many University of Texas students render their services by accompanying the children to various sports activities. The director of this program, Ray Lopez, hoped to expand this program to adults making available exercise classes and volleyball. Summer field trips are sponsored by the community center. Known as “Summer Happenings” and financed by the Hogg Foundation, this program provides for the cultural and educational enrichment of the children in Montopolis.

The collective benefits of all these programs organized by the parish was exhibited in a recent survey. This study, taken in February of 1971, revealed that every member of the Montopolis community, age three months to ninety-six years, had benefited either directly or indirectly from these projects.

The statistics of the Montopolis story are impressive. Montopolis now has the lowest crime and high school dropout rates in Austin. Only about eight percent of the residents are on welfare. The parishioners have conquered their isolation with a bus system. Two hundred. homes have been built; sixty more are under construction, and the Diocese of Austin plans to build a hundred and twenty-nine apartments. Montopolis Drive is paved, and new sewers mean that water no longer collects in the streets.

There is still much more work to be done, The parish needs more recreational facilities, a fire station, a medical clinic, more assigned police protection, and more shopping facilities. However, under the continued guidance of Father Underwood and with the active participation of the parishioners, Montopolis should overcome all these difficulties

The real future of Montopolis is still questionable. When completely rehabilitated, will the community become self-contained and interested only in preserving its own new found stability, or will the community devote its effort to helping others also accomplish the impossible? Apparently, the Dolores parish is leaning toward the latter of these possibilities. Although still struggling itself and the poorest parish in Austin, Dolores has adopted an even poorer and. more desperate parish in Mexico. The San Rafael parish, seventy miles from Guadalajara, serves three Indian tribes--the Huicholas, the Coras and the Tepehuanas. Each year these Indians manage to coax enough food from their infertile land to last six months. During the other six months they keep living only through the generosity of outsiders. The Dolores parish has sent numerous boxes of food, clothing, and. medical supplies. Also, because it takes the pastor of San Rafael three days to walk from one end of his parish to the other, Dolores has bought him a pick-up truck.

The amazing success of the Dolores parish should be a lesson to all other churches. It is not enough to preach or partially practice a philosophy. A congregation must dedicate itself to the daily application of its religious doctrine if it desires to even become of any true significance or benefit to society.