ST. THOMAS MORE CENTER (1972)

"We are not just a parish but a center for the life of this neighborhood," said Frederick D. McCallin, founding pastor of St. Thomas More Center. "And I chose the name of St. Thomas More because we wanted it to be a center for all seasons for all the community. We wanted a Vatican II parish to welcome people of all faiths and involve the lay people."

Father McCallin's dream materialized with the 1971 formation of St. Thomas More's, which was authorized by Archbishop Casey to serve the proliferating subdivisions south and east of Englewood. The first Mass was said on February 13, 1971, in what soon became the largest parish in the archdiocese, with 4,371 families by 1987.

St. Thomas More's is also the only church in Colorado with a liquor license and a restaurant--The Padre. When Father McCallin applied in 1974 for the restaurant liquor license, it caused a great hubbub in the neighborhood and in the press. Since then, the restaurant's family atmosphere and tasty, inexpensive meals have pacified many one-time skeptics and opponents.

"Christ fed the masses, and so do we," explained Father McCallin.

Jesus knew you had to feed people and make them comfortable before you could talk to them effectively. Through the Padre Restaurant, we have brought people closer to God, to the center and to each other. Nonbelievers, Jews, and Christians of many denominations have eaten together here and shared the social sacrament of humans reaching out to other humans.

The Padre's menu doubled as a quiz in Bible history: Adam's Pride (chef's salad); Eve's Pleasure (shrimp salad); the Apple (fruit salad); the Fig Leaf (spinach salad); the Prodigal Son (hamburger); Satan's Temptation (desserts); Heavenly Hops (beer); and Holy Spirits (cocktails). Customers of the Padre have frequently found a lively, small leprechan dressed as a priest there to greet them. "They are astonished to learn that this greeter is actually Father McCallin," reported a waitress. "And to find him such a lovable character!"

Father McCallin is the grandson of Andrew McCallin, an Irishman who came to Denver in 1883, going to work as a plasterer who helped build the Colorado State Capitol and the first building at Regis College. After growing up in South Denver's St. Francis de Sales parish and attending Regis College, Fred entered St. Thomas Seminary. Following ordination in 1942, his first assignment was to the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. There he learned how to manage and promote a parish from a master, Monsignor Hugh L. McMenamin.

From 1946 to 1967, Father McCallin headed St. Mary's in Littleton, spearheading that parish's move from a small downtown church to a twenty-acre site on Jackass Hill, where McCallin built a new church, parish center, grade school, junior high school, convent, and rectory. Father McCallin's reputation as a builder led Archbishop Casey to assign him to Colorado Springs in 1968 to build a new St. Mary High School and the beautiful new church of the Divine Redeemer.

After hernia surgery and severe complications, Father McCallin retired to All Souls parish in Denver. Some said he had come home to Denver to die, but he had other ideas. He began meeting with some old parishioners from St. Mary's in Littleton and new families moving to the fast growing areas of Arapahoe County near interstate highway 25. A 1971 census revealed that 590 Catholic families lived between Belleview Avenue on the north, County Line Road on the south, Colorado Boulevard on the west, and Parker Road on the east. On February 13, 1971, Father McCallin celebrated the first Mass for this proposed parish in the gymnasium of the Walnut Hills Elementary School. A lunch table was used for the altar under a crucifix tied to a basketball hoop.

Soon Father McCallin was offering four Masses a weekend in this makeshift church. He began driving around the fringe of fast growing suburbia, looking for a permanent site. He found the highest hill around on South Quebec Street, three blocks north of County Line Road, which separates Arapahoe and Douglas counties. From there, Father McCallin could see the full Front Range panorama framed between Pikes and Long's peaks. Downtown Denver's giant glass boxes looked like dwarf towers thirteen miles to the northwest beyond a sea of advancing subdivisions.

On that grassy prairie hilltop, Father McCallin buried a miraculous medal and prayed. The medal worked--later in 1971, he paid $200,000 for forty acres in the middle of nowhere, bounded by what would only later become Niagara Street on the west, Mineral Avenue on the north, Quebec Street on the east, and Otero Avenue on the south. Father McCallin later sold ten acres to the adjacent Fox Ridge subdivision for more than the cost of the original forty, making enough on the transaction to begin construction of St. Thomas More Center.

Architect Roland "Bud" Johnson designed a modular parish center as the first building, using the same low-slung glass and reddish-brown brick that he would employ for later additions. This pioneer $500,000 structure included a chapel, all-purpose hall, administrative offices, and the Padre Restaurant. The first Mass was offered December 8, 1974, and the first meal served December 18 to what had become a parish of over 1,000 registered families.

In keeping with Father McCallin's hopes that St. Thomas would be a social and recreational center as well as a religious one, four tennis courts, seven softball fields, a football gridiron, and a soccer field were laid out on the west side of the center. Construction began on a 1,500-seat church-in-the-round in January 1982. Picture windows capitalize on the spectacular mountain views; the circular auditorium rises to a central skylight, above which a steel cross soars fifteen feet skyward. A vestigal apse serves as the tabernacle and as a solarium for some of Father McCallin's many potted plants.

Despite the huge size--eight weekend Masses serve as many as 15,000 people--St. Thomas More's remained a warm, personal place because of the efforts of Father McCallin, associate pastors Donald Willette and James Brennan, and several hundred committed lay volunteers. Besides the regular 6:30 Sunday morning silent Mass, an 8:45 rock Mass, a guitar Mass, and traditional Masses at 10:15 and 11:30, St. Thomas's has offered ethnic Masses ranging from polka to Polynesian, from mariachi to bagpipe. Denver Symphony Orchestra musicians perform during Christmas and Easter services.

"A Mazzusah on the door of the Padre and kosher food service made Jews feel welcome here for meetings and Bar Mitzvahs," Father McCallin boasted in a 1986 interview. "We've also hosted Presbyterian and Episcopal services, political candidates nights, and we are the voting place for two precincts. We do everything we can to make St. Thomas More a center for everyone in this new suburban community of strangers."

St. Thomas More's is not content to be the largest parish and what some have called the "Catholic Country Club." To provide classrooms for over 3,000 parish children studying catechism in private homes, the parish built a new youth center in 1987. Father McCallin raised $10,000 toward this goal, selling $250 tickets on a Cadillac. "I'm in sales, not management," he quipped, but he had managed to build and maintain one of the most innovative parishes in the archdiocese. On a typical weekend, 15,000 people flow through the center for Mass, for meals, for athletics, and a full range of activities, from aerobics to Al-Anon meetings. At the time of his retirement in 1988, when he was replaced by another convivial Irishman, Michael A. Walsh, Father Fred was baptizing about twenty infants a week.

Father McCallin traced the inspiration for St. Thomas More Center to Vatican II: "Pope John XXIII went to the window and flung it open to allow fresh air to flow into the Catholic Church. At St. Thomas More we have tried to capture that fresh air and a fresh approach to Catholicism."