Dale Moss | Alternative Catholic church grows, moves to southern Indiana

Sacred Cross now serving in New Albany

Maybe, just maybe, David Kocka would build a chapel big enough for friends and family, a place alongside his secluded home.

Kocka imagined no bigger ambitions.

Others had bigger hopes, bolder ones, ones Kocka adopted seemingly after pinching himself. Here he is, leading an alternative Catholic parish in Southern Indiana, providing an alternative to customs he long endorsed. "It's not something I expected," the 60-year-old married priest said of the role he assumes. "I didn't go looking for it."

Sacred Cross Oratory offers Mass on Sundays in the basement of real-estate firm Schuler Bauer, in New Albany. The quarters are borrowed and the parish hopes to obtain its own attractive church for 150 or so. A donated site on Paoli Pike might not be large enough, so the search goes on.

"Once we get the facility, the church will just mushroom," said parishioner Pat Kelley, of Floyds Knobs.

Among about 30 regulars, Kelley talks of a unique feeling of family, how Kocka cares about and ministers to one and all. This is still church, all right, with tweaked traditions.

"I like the fact it's more open-minded," Kelley said. "It's a broader concept for the new times."

Kocka lost his place -- his vocation -- in the Roman Catholic Church 20 years ago when he found love. Like that, Kocka was out as guardian of Mount Saint Francis, a local Franciscan friary, and in limbo. With wife Judy, Kocka moved to 140 rolling acres in Harrison County, near Laconia. He found Plan B contentment, and he prospers as a sculptor as much as anyone around here can.

"I've had enough to get by -- not to get rich," he said.

Their home included an upstairs space for worship and for a decade, it sufficed. A mentor urged Kocka to seek more. He began to attend Catholic services in Louisville that likewise stray out from the umbrella of Rome. Kocka was then asked to be that group's pastor. That led eventually to Kocka's involvement in the creation of the Ecumenical Catholic Church USA, an organization now in several states. Kocka is one of its five bishops.

The flock he had joined in Louisville chose to move to Southern Indiana this year as a pioneering choice for Catholics and anyone else.

Not that competition is the game, or confrontation the style.

"We have no desire to put anything in somebody's face," Kocka said. "We don't have a need to do that."

And not that anything goes, or that nothing is sacred. Kocka talks of walking in step with "old" Catholicism. Women can be priests and, obviously, priests can be married. Members who are remarried readily receive sacraments, as does anyone who has been baptized.

Many, but not all, members come with Catholic credentials, along with frustration or confusion.

"It'll serve people who somehow get missed," Kocka said of Sacred Cross Oratory.

Tony Schuler, who loans the parish the basement and attends its Masses, said Kocka's services are appreciably the same as at standard Catholic churches.

"It's more to love and to be together than to follow every rule," Schuler said.

Kocka also presides over the Harrison County Arts Council and the trustees of the Boone Township fire department. He is busier at his age than he had figured he would be, wondering aloud about enough time to complete sculptures plus whatever else.

"I don't need to play church," Kocka said. "I did that at age 12 and did a good job of it."

Still, Kocka is committed to leading Sacred Cross Oratory to whatever heights it is meant to go.

"If it's not God's will," he said, "it's not going to happen."

Mass is at 10:30 a.m. at 4206 Charlestown Road.