St. Nick's Parish

The neighborhood of St. Nick's parish seems warm to me, but I think that it would be grating at times. It sounds like the kind of place I would like to get out of every once in a while, but always come back to.

People might insist on such obviously inefficient and unprofitable courses of action because they prized loyalty so highly.  Ben Bohac may have made less money on each individual mortgage, but his good reputation as an honest lender who looked out for the best interests of the borrower probably gained him a greater number of customers.  The personal relationship he built with his borrowers and depositors meant that they would never even consider taking their business to another bank.  He may not have made large sums of money off of each customer, but he could count on their business for life.

Nepotism can be a good thing for employers and employees because it teaches everyone exactly what to expect.  It creates a greater incentive for people to behave well, because they know that good behavior will reward their whole family and bad behavior will punish their whole family.  When forced to realize that actions have consequences reaching beyond themselves, employees will act with more forethought.

To a certain extent, the softer authority of a Msgr. Fennessey does require the harder authority of a Fr. Lynch to back it up.  Some people will do their duty with relatively little prodding, because they want to do it, but others need more incentive, other than their own desire. The position of harder authority does not need to be quite as belligerent as Fr. Lynch was, but it is still necessary to keep things running smoothly, unpleasant though it may be.

Someone might join a convent and "never think about the restrictions" because in the 1950's, there were restrictions to all facets of life, much more so than today. To a certain extent, joining a convent merely meant exchanging one set of restrictions for another, rather than having the added burden of additional ones. For example, Ehrenhalt mentions that women who chose to live unmarried in the community were put under intense social pressure, which was not present for nuns in a convent. Even if a woman did choose to get married, she would be prevented from pursuing her own interests if they conflicted with her role as stay-at-home mother and homemaker.  If her family's finances were tight enough, she might be able to get a job outside of the home, but certainly not one that would provide even as much intellectual stimulation as teaching several dozen elementary students might for a nun.  There were restrictions to every manner of life in the 1950's, joining a convent merely meant a different set of them.