Television Review - 'Scenes From a Parish' - Test of Faith for a Congregation in Lawrence, Mass. - NYTimes.com

Television Review - 'Scenes From a Parish' - Test of Faith for a Congregation in Lawrence, Mass. - NYTimes.com: "The tagline used to promote the film, “‘Love thy neighbor’ just got a whole lot harder,” might conjure images of shouting matches between old-guard parishioners and newcomers, but there are none.

Instead there are occasional, relatively benign comments from lifelong parishioners that indicate discomfort with the immigrants and the changes they have brought — the same sorts of remarks that established populations have been making about newcomers, and older people have been making about younger ones, for generations.

Sparks do not fly, and tempers do not flare. The heart of Mr. Rutenbeck’s film is really in the charitable efforts that the longtime parishioners pursue despite their reservations. Those efforts mostly involve food: distributing grocery bags to poor residents and, ultimately, building the Cor Unum Meal Center, which opened in 2006 and serves free meals to the city’s hungry."