It's a buoyant feeling to worship in a church that is full, packed, bursting at the seams. Not a very common experience these days, as you know.
This month a friend told me that Father Walter Cuenin, who was forced to leave the large Our Lady Help of Christians parish near my home, had set up shop at Brandeis University. She said his new, small congregation was thriving. I went. It was.
For obvious reasons. Cuenin, who has twinkling blue eyes and a Marine Corps-style brushcut, is a charismatic preacher, the rare man or woman who speaks from the pulpit and commands your attention. I couldn't help thinking: liberal priest hounded from his job by the Boston Archdiocese lands on his feet at Brandeis, which calls itself "the only nonsectarian, Jewish-sponsored college or university in the country." Who woulda thunk it!
Yet there it is. "I'm very happy at Brandeis," Cuenin told me a few days after I worshiped with him at Brandeis's Bethlehem chapel. (Brandeis's three chapels - Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish - were built around a pond on the Waltham Upper Campus "in such a way so that when the sun sets, no one chapel casts a shadow on another," according to the university's website.) "The university invests a lot in the students' spiritual life," Cuenin continued. "There are Protestant and Muslim chaplains here, as well as rabbis."
Ministering to students has its own challenges, of course. Cuenin officiates at a 7 p.m. Sunday Mass as well as at a 10 a.m. service, "because most of the kids are asleep in the mornings. When they say, 'Let's meet at 10,' they generally mean 10 o'clock at night, which is sometimes tough to arrange."
In addition to the chaplaincy, Cuenin also helps arrange panels and seminars on such subjects as "Interfaith Dating" - a hot topic - and "We Are What We Eat," a forum on dietary restrictions in different religions. Cuenin has a long track record of interfaith work, which meshes well with his Brandeis assignment.
Working with his opposite numbers at Tufts, MIT, and the University of Maryland, he even snagged a Department of Homeland Security grant to analyze intolerance in the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim faiths. Cuenin is also president of the Massachusetts Bible Society, cofounded by John Quincy Adams almost exactly 200 years ago. Once primarily in the business of distributing Bibles, the MBS now also underwrites Internet ventures. "We are trying to learn how to spread the word of God through new media," Cuenin said.
Several friends of mine worship at Our Lady's, where 1,500 parishioners attended his farewell service three years ago. At that service, Cuenin joked that he had been "banned in Boston" for comments he had made in support of gay marriage and the role of women in the church. After Mass, 1,000 of his supporters marched three miles to the Boston Archdiocese, protesting what they viewed as Cuenin's forced removal. By contrast, Cuenin now has about 100 full-time parishioners.
It's a blow when a popular priest leaves a parish, and I asked several current Our Lady's parishioners how the church absorbed Cuenin's loss. The consensus was that membership declined immediately following his departure, but has grown back to roughly the same level as three years ago. Which pleases Cuenin just fine. "I'm not trying to set up Our Lady's II out here," he said during our chat at Brandeis. "I've never urged anyone to leave that parish and I wouldn't want them to do so."
During our conversation, Cuenin found plenty of kind words to say about Cardinals Bernard Law and Sean O'Malley, with whom he crossed swords during his 12 years at Our Lady's. "I've put a lot of things behind me," Cuenin said. "Law was terrific in interfaith work, and O'Malley is, too."
He noted that O'Malley had accompanied Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican official responsible for religious relations with Jews, to a highly visible, menorah rededication event in Braintree earlier this year. "That was done because of the action of the Pope," Cuenin explained. In January, Pope Benedict had lifted the excommunication of British bishop Richard Williamson, a vocal Holocaust denier. "That ceremony sent an important message - he did the right thing," Cuenin said.
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com. 
