Be prepared for parish closings: get Doherty report
In August Eileen and Stan Doherty of CTA New England and Voice of the Faithful/Hingham,
Mass., who are living through the mass closing of 82 Boston parishes, released
part II of their detailed "Informal Statistical Study" and analysis
of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston (RCAB) 2004 "parish reconfiguration."
They think Boston is a pilot project that other bishops will imitate. To take
responsibility and to hold your bishop accountable, you need this information.
Information is power. Get a copy directly from them: EileenAndStan@comcast.net
Some highlights
RCAB's unspoken priorities that Dohertys think are behind the decisions on
closing parishes:
- Convert parish property into capital under centralized control.
Canonically suppress parishes, don't merge them, so you can sell them off.
(Boston Globe estimate: first 68 closed parishes’ value = $450,000,000.)
- Clerical administration of parishes. No consideration of parishes
led by laity or even deacons. Must have 1:1 priest: parish ratio. So, shrink
number of parishes to fit dwindlng number of priest pastors.
- Fewer parishes = bigger parishes (seating, staffing, parking).
- Standardized parishes over diverse parishes. "Catholic identity"
over ethnic, multicultural identities.
- Less open dialogue. More orthodoxy, homogeneity. Hence, close VotF
stronghold parishes where people get to discuss everything. With a new superfund
of centralized cash and lower overhead, RCAB will be less dependent on size
of Sunday collections. Can afford to be less inclusive.
Some Doherty predictions:
- Top priority: recruiting seminarians. (O'Malley: "If every
parish sent one young man to the seminary every ten years, we'd have more
than enough vocations." 5/25/04) Big investment in youth ministry with
recruiting spin. Expect scorecards.
- Funding, staff to larger parishes, not smaller. (Until there are
more priests, senseless to invest in parishes that will be suppressed in five
years.)
- Orthodoxy testing of clergy and lay staff displaced by parish suppressions
will be done before reassignment.
- New paradigm: the military model. Archdiocese develops educational
programs. Parishes "orthodox" enough to transmit doctrine to laity.
Laity responsible for three things: accepting the doctrine, supporting parish
and diocese financially, nurturing seminarians.
Prepare before the closings
The RCAB model will be imitated. E.g. Former Boston Auxiliary Bishop Richard
Malone, the new bishop of Portland, Maine, announced a "New Evangelization"
that will reconfigure (suppress?) as many as 35 of the 138 parishes. Many smaller
parishes will yield to a new class of super-parishes or "canonical parishes."
Sound familiar? The laity need to be empowered before a bishop announces such
a move. In Part III of their study, the Dohertys will document what laypeople
can do to prepare for the suppressions.
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