'No parish is safe'

"The decision means ... now the center of gravity [in the church] becomes the diocese, not the parish,” he said. “The parishes become expendable."--that's inaccurate. The center of gravity becomes Rome, not the dioceses.

And in this day of instant communications to anywhere in the world and with computer wizardry listing the name of every Catholic in the world, every parish in the world and every diocese in the world the pope could easily become the master manipulator, the ultimate theological chess player moving all of these pieces around and around. Sounds unreal? Don't bet on it. Why our pope could say Mass for everyone or anyone anywhere in the world. We'll all become expert Skypers each week, tuning into Rome, saying our prayers for the One, United, Holy Catholic Church.

I think a lot of the old white Europeans are in denial -- all those Irish, German, Polish and Italians -- are all at below replacment level -- you will be a minority by 2050 according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

http://articles.cnn.com/2008-08-13/us/census.minorities_1_hispanic-popul...

It's going to be different ballgame -- best to admit and get used to it.

Since there is no Eucharist without a priest, there can be no "Eucharistic Community" without a priest.

One early answer to your very significant questions comes from Cleveland. There, Bishop Lennon assured the faithful that "The Church is about people and their faith, not about buildings….". A community of several hundred parishioners of St. Peter's took him at his word, rented a warehouse, and are carrying on as before while the Bishop gets the building he plans to close. His March letter on unity, obeisance, and concerns about salvation apparently didn't produce the kind of "vibrancy" that he has announced as a major goal.

Conspiracy theories aside, parishes need money to function and the support of a certain number of people. At the end of the day, parishes that do not have both of those things risk being closed. No conspiracies, just principals of financial accounting.

A eucharistic community cannot exist without a priest to celebrate the Eucharist with that community. A eucharistic community cannot exist if it is not in communion with it's bishop.

The sad fact is that resources for some parishes, both financial and personnel, have decreased. There are some parishes where, despite best efforts, attendance is down significantly, and closings and consolidations are the only solution.

Now in Boston, "reconfiguration," could have been handled much better. A clear set of conditions under which a parish would be subject to closure, should had been established and adherred to. The consultatiion of the laity should had been more open and organized. And a process of closure, which would have given the members the opportuntiy to grieve and move on should had been created.

Still, Cardinal O'Malley needed to make difficult decisions; and flawed as it might be, he followed the law of the Church. The parishioners made their appeals, according to Church law, now it is time for all to move on.

It is the very importance of our parishes that is blinding us to the danger. People work like dogs to keep their own parish open or to try to preserve some aspect of it in a new combined parish. Very few raise their heads long enough to notice that this is going on not just in the entire diocese, not just in this country, but all over the world.

Again, the anger is often focused on whichever priest or bishop is involved, without the recognition that it's the system at fault.

We are replaying the story of Solomon and the two mothers. The male celibates are perfectly willing to let the baby be cut in half unless they get their way while the laity give up everything trying to save the Church.

Thank you NCR for being there, for letting all of us out here on the front lines know that we aren't alone.

It has of late become clear that "no bishop" who closes parishes "is safe" from the risk of disenfranchised parishioners making their own separate peace, and in some cases taking their priests with them. Like the Whos in Whoville, when the Grinch comes and takes their physical plant, their stained glass windows, their steeples and schools, some are choosing to show that Community comes, anyway.

These imperious closing actions, together with their refusal to ordain women or to allow ordained, married, men to serve as priests are the greatest boon the various alternative Catholic sects could ever hope for. There is increasing awareness that Rome is not the only valid claimant even to a valid Apostolic Succession and that many Catholics do not regard "Communion with Rome" as a drop-dead issue.

I'm not fully convinced that the Roman bishops even object to that. When faced with a choice of seeing their congregations halved versus changing their way of life (and that of their subordinates), perhaps many would as soon see the numbers drop. They've hinted at that.

It should be particularly noted that ethnic parishes are likely to be among the hardest hit. American bishops a century ago, when these parishes were being founded, didn't like them; American bishops today, when these parishes are on the chopping block, still find no need for them. "Community" will be the acculturated mix the bishop prefers, not what the parishioners want. The achievement of Polish Americans who, on pennies and nickels, built a network of almost 800 parishes in America at its zenith, have now been whittled to the 400s. Thanks to recent immigration, those that exist still have a chance to survive. Groups like the Hungarians, Slovaks, and Germans have long ago seen their parish heritage decimated. Italians are probably next. At the risk of sounding politically incorrect, the only "ethnic" parish a bishop would dare not close is a Latino one (for many bishops, "ethnic" and "Latino" probably mean the same thing). What's most interesting is that Vatican II's teaching on culture in Gaudium et Spes repudiated the "territorial parish is best" mentality of the early 20th century American bishops and their canonist yes men: GS taught clearly that the Church, while not wedded to any culture, becomes incarnate in a culture. The place that usually happens is a parish. ANd while some prelates have thought of ethnic parishes as half-way houses on the way to assimilation, Vatican II's "right to culture" also suggests the movement should go the other way: ethnic parishes properly contribute to SUSTAINING their parishioner's cultural heritage and, therefore, their suppression is a cultural injustice to their people. The tragic paradox is that a century and a half century ago, American bishops went down in history as builders--Spellman, Cushing, et al.--while today's generation will go down as "night watchmen," securely checking the padlocks and the doors as they "downsize" their dioceses.

If any educated Catholic is surprised (now) to learn that the Diocese, or more rightly the Bishop, is the center of the local church, then they never correctly knew their canon law, or the theology or ecclesiology of their church. The local church IS the diocesan bishop and the People of God within his local area gathered to him and under his pastoral care.

The diocesan bishop, preeminently, is responsible for the pastoral care of souls under his geographical jurisdiction. The bishop creates and rises up local parish churches to (essentially) be the pastoral and sacramental service stations in sub-divided geographical areas of his diocese and he delegates the care of souls within that “parish” to the proper pastor of that smaller area. It should come as no surprise to anyone that if the local bishop has the authority to establish and create a “parish church” that he also has the concomitant authority to de-establish or close a “parish church” given shifting or changing demographic needs: such as shifting population, shortage of priests, loss of a local church’s financial viability (to provide for the physical plant) given decreasing membership in the parish.

NOW, if the fact that a local bishop is the center of the local church is a fact lost on everyone in the parishes because the bishops lived a life style where they stayed primarily in their cathedral and not in (or visiting) the parishes in any consistent manner, then no wonder things now come as a surprise that he and not the local parish is the center of the church.

NOW, if the fact that the donated gifts, bricks and windows and the named pews and statues that will be lost-to-use when a parish is closed is now traumatic, everyone, including the bishop, should understand that death is always traumatic, and perhaps all the bishops should provide for a parish wake period, funeral service (de-consecration service) and then the closing, sale or re-assigned use of the property, AFTER parishioners have had a change to take to themselves seemly items of remembrance: just like when a loved one passes away. Perhaps bishops treat the closing of parishes with less pastoral care than they’d exhibit at a wake service for someone who lived in the cathedral parish, and treat the parish closing with more consultative business acumen than most people can swallow when they’re in the pain of loss.

I’ve written what I have, not to defend any bishop (most act more like bureaucratic minions than pastors of souls) but to encourage the People of God who are in the care of their bishop to demand better bishops, more say in their selection and more ownership of their church, remembering that their church is MORE than the local parish sacramental service station that they pull into on Sundays.

Perhaps if we see that building community and being community are two different things, we might have a different perspective. It's like the difference between trying and being. If we are community, we might be attractive. If we are trying to be community then we aren't for when we are trying we are building something that is of our own image of what we want and we ignore what "is" to our folly. What "is" is the commonality of our faith, not the ideas of doing often associated with building community.

Aw, heck, we can all watch Mass and adore the Blessed Sacrament from afar on EWTN. Raymond Arroyo can tell us who to vote for and Johnette Benkovic can teach us to be self-righteous and condescending. Who needs a parish community with resources like that right in our own living room??

"What is most important in this strategy? Preserving the eucharistic community or preserving at all costs, including the life of the community, an all-male celibate clergy?"

What a silly question! We know the answer: Vaticana locuta, finita est.

I live in St. Louis, MO and the restructuring of the parishes has been going a while here as well. The sad part is that the Catholic Church as a whole doesn't realize that the reason the parishes are in such dire straights financially is that people are leaving the Catholic faith in droves. People feel that as a person if I'm not getting what I need to keep my faith alive in the church I was raised in or have been attending then I will find another church/religion to satisfy my spiritual needs. The church needs to understand that the people it serves have changed. No longer are we sheep just following the pack. We have become a society of free thinkers and we feel that our religion should nurture our faith and not just be a depository for our money offering each week. People vote with their feet. Once the parishes, Bishops and even the pope understand that our youth are disenfranchised from the church then they need to find a way to involve them and look at things thru the youth's eyes. Only then will they fully understand that the old school church is dying and a new one needs to happen in a progressive way. The Vatican needs to really study the Mega Churches and what they are doing, because with all the former Catholics going to them they must be doing something right. My biggest fear is that in just a couple of generations the Catholic Church as we know it will be gone.

Looks like "the time to move on" has been made by those parishioners who decided to re-locate their church community because B. Lennon shut their parish down. Good for them and their own faithfulness to the community and the laity. The canon lawyers do not care one iota about the parishioners. Neither does B. Lennon.

WE here in the Nova Scotia diocese of Antigonish are facing similar issues, as the diocese, in it's infinite, inspired wisdom, offers to either close our churches or sell them to us. Since there are two Presbyterian churches and Unitarian church in this small community of 3000 (with the Catholic populaton at maybe 500, and the next nearest Catholic church 30 miles away), the solution is straightforward for me: I'll probably attend a Presbyterian church or the Unitarian church, as will my weekly Offertory offering. The Church is cutting off it's nose to spite its face. And all the while, Rome sits on literally trillions of dollars of assets, and could easily pay off the claims of those abused by its henchmen. Clearly Satan is succeeding in his efforts to take down the Church.

When finances and priests become the decisive factors in whether people gather as church, we have wandered away from the apostolic mission. "Where two or more are gathered" gives the heartbeat to a eucharistic community. It seems to me what is slowly emerging is a "back to the future" scenario where Catholics and Christians are being nudged to become true communities who live out the gospel mission where they are and within their means. We may see the dissolution of church buildings, but the people will be called, indeed compelled to form community within their neighborhoods and homes. What was once an empire is dying, and what will be emerging is communities of faithful people, sharing their resources with each other, serving each other, and renewing the face of the earth. This spiritual empowerment and growth will spread across the world not through Twitter and YouTube, but through personal relationships on the ground.

A eucharistic community cannot exist without a priest to celebrate the Eucharist with that community. A eucharistic community cannot exist if it is not in communion with it's [sic] bishop.

This is exemplary of the reversed, 'wag the dog' sort of thinking that has been espoused and perpetrated by the feudal Roman Catholic hierarchy since medieval times. In fact, the clergy seeks, rather successfully, to hold the Sacraments hostage to its own power over the hearts and pocketbooks of the laity.

Much of the Christian world sees things in exactly the opposite way. That is, that their can be no priests / ministers without a community to call them to ministry. That it is the "two or three gathered in His name" that makes God present. Not forumlaic words of consecration said by an individual with fingers once magically annointed and duly authorized by a local prelate. (And by "present," I refer to whatever sort of 'presence' the particular interpreters may choose, from 'Real Presence' to the purely spiritual.)

And furthermore, much of Christendom believes there can be no bishop without he or she has been found to be consistently in communion with their constituency.

"The Diocese not the parish becomes the locus of Church..." Escuse me?

Welcome to the Catholic Church! We are not Protestant- the Diocese preceeds the parishes, and the parishes do not exist independently of the Diocese. We are not congregational, and I don't know where or why people would expect us to be so. In Catholic Theology the parish has NEVER been the locus of the Church, but rather a local manifestation of the Church.

The parish is really an extension of the Diocese, in the same manner as a priest is an extension of the bishop, or rather the representative of the bishop in the parish. Parishes are set up or surpressed depending on pastoral need, not pastoral desires or wants. When one becomes part of a parish, one is part of a Diocese, and one is first part of the Diocese before one is part of a parish. When one gives alms in the offering, one offers that money for the work of God, one does not offer money with the expectation that the parish would never be surpressed if the pastoral needs change.

Incompetent Bishops

Our bishop appointed a gentleman to head-up our five and ten year strategic plan. By all accounts, the gentleman in question was a failure in every important secular position he ever held. This gentleman helped determine what parishes would be targeted for closure. Are such decisions in safe hands? We've passed the end of the first five years of the plan. Since implementation, several parishes were closed in what are now high-growth areas. Great strategic planning? Certainly not. Only God knows who our bishop is listening to when he makes appointments, certainly not successful people who know who is capable and who is not. The staffing at our diocesan offices is a travesty. Sadly, I think our bishop is not too far from the norm.

It does not come as much of a surprise that the Vatican Supreme court ruled that "a bishop has unfettered power in determining which parishes to erect and which to suppress" when you consider that Archbishop Raymond Burk, formerly of St. Louis is now head of the Vatican Supreme Court. All you have to do is look at the mess he created at St. Stan's, the Polish parish in St. Louis, by exercising this absolute power and you can see his handwriting all over this decree.

Here in Los Angeles I think we have about 7 or 8 "priestess" parishes and another 40 or so coming up. Why should parishes be closed due to lack of priests? These parishes are alive and well (at least supported by other parishes when parishioners are too poor).

I think it is lame to close parishes due to lack of priests. There certainly is not a lack of the people of God.

Ordain married deacons but don't close down vibrant church communities! This makes no sense at all.

It is time to ordain married men.

Now, if there are no people and no money, that's a different story.

If the people are there, let the priests circulate like they used to do in days of old.

Where are the plans to merge/dissolve the DIOCESES AND ARCHDIOCESES as well, since the number of clergy, congregations and parishes is dropping drastically??? It's the obvious time to get rid of all the corrupt, morally weak and cowardly Hierarchs who condoned and enabled criminal abusers. Their continuing active part in the Church is the heart of the scandal.

In the USA, ~ 5% of the priests were abusers, but over half of the bishops were enablers -- North America, Europe and who knows where else???...

After WWII, the allies insisted upon an intense de-Nazification of all leadership in the recovering Western Germany, since it was ridiculous to expect any of the former leaders to change their ways!!

Same thing goes for the RCC...

Bishop Lennon gets the church property of the parish, gets to sell it for money. So he can keep up his lavish lifestyle of course.

Is that what these church closings are really all about? Properties to sell to enrich bishops, and archbishops bank accounts at the expense and at the deprivation of eucharistic communities of the parishioners.

The parishioners BOUGHT or DONATED the land, BUILT and FURNISHED the churches, and rectories, and convents, PAID for upkeep, repairs, utilities of these properties. Then these greedy bishops sell them to line their own pockets.

In Chicago Cardinal George took over a convent and remodelled it to the tune of million dollars for his own personal mansion which he lives in as sole (NOT soul) owner. Too much of this: Greedy, arrogant, narcissitic, selfish hierarchy.

We need to allow women into the celebate clergy. We have a long history in the church of committed women religious, and their service to the church needs to be recognized.

I have seen wonderful faithful Catholic women in particular, in country towns, strong workers for their church, beautifully handcrafting alter cloths ect. a prayer with each stitch crafted to the glory of their God.
Contributing to vestments costing not a small fortune, supporting their parish priest and indirectly the Diocesen Bishop, shunted off as little consequence, when he decides to close their church in their twilight years when the money not so freely available and arthritis sets in.
Everything and everybody has a used by date irrespective of what is said to the contrary, unless of course wealthy benefactors to the church or you're the Pope.
I've known of old nuns and priest's as well, not that it would enter their heads they were seen as such.
In one case, grave sites of religious women were so neglected in the Catholic section of a cemetery, a non- Catholic, (maybe an atheist), was so disgusted it was taken up with the hierarchy.
The Bishop always sits well, with his Crook and Mitre, power and wealth of course..
and most times an annoying grin at media releases.
They are not always worthy, My Lord, who knows that better than we as mere mortals.

How can canon 515 by valid in these United States? The Vatican is a foreign Nation. Our constitution is not subject to the Vatican. The Vatican claims immunity from our laws because it is a foreign power. What is the matter with our courts, that they should give any validity to the laws of the Vatican, if they cannot hold them liable in the USA for crimes committed by their employees here? The Vatican of course claims, the bishops and priest are not their employees. Well, which is it? Any attorney's out there????

the business model of the RCAB in Boston is one based on a central, hierarchical command structure of top-down, command and control well known in the Pentagon and on Wall St. .......once you have established local franchises(parishes) with local managers (priests) who have complete veto power over any local parish decision making, then the rest is easy because the priests have already taken vows of obedience to their CEO handlers in the head office.....hence ruling from the top is easy, because you are in complete control of local life, and can threaten hell fire, excommunication, mortal sin, etc., to anybody who challenges your rule. So the Business Model proceeds on the mantra = "one priest, one parish...no priest, no parish", and that is what is being played out today all across America.....for the local Bishops to do otherwise would mean that they relinquish control over the local parishes, and let the local parishioners run the show, requiring only that an itinerant priest (who serves a "district" rather than a parish, i.e, just like your local Fire Dept.)comes to provide spiritual "service", rather than running the parish (which the local parishioners are perfectly capable of doing, and which Boston "vigil" parishes ARE doing for the last 6 years).....so it is quite clear that all this fuss is about power and control, NOT about faith and morals.
So, good Catholic people, we are locked in a struggle about who runs our parishes, us or them? Isn't it time for Civil Disobedience? Isn't it time to throw off your learned helplessness, your passivity, and deal with your Bishops as EQUALS.....or perhaps, inferiors.