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	Catholics Pan Church Closings Pottsville Area Parishioners Place Ads, Circulate Petitions against Consolidation Plan By Daniel Patrick Sheehan Morning Call January 27, 2008 http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-5closings.6243075jan27,0,3049149.story Steve Babinchak, a daily communicant with one eye on the eternal and the other on this troubled world, strays into territory far beyond nostalgia as he argues against the impending closure of churches in the Diocese of Allentown. "Everybody in an instant in the whole world will see their soul, see their sin, and a lot of people are going to come back to the church," the Schuylkill County man said, summarizing the prophecy of Our Lady of Garabandal — in which four Spanish children claimed in the 1960s to have seen images of the Virgin Mary, who said God would give people one last chance at redemption by allowing them to glimpse the state of their souls. With such an episode imminent, the diocese can't justify closing churches, said Babinchak, imagining floods of repentant sinners searching for places of refuge and finding them shuttered. It's perhaps the most esoteric argument being mounted by the laity as parish consolidation, a process that has unfolded slowly across the five-county diocese in the past year, picks up speed. Some churches could vanish beginning this year as the diocese tries to reconfigure itself to serve shifting Catholic populations — shrinking in cities, growing in suburbs — with a dwindling number of priests. In McAdoo, Monsignor Edward Zemanik earlier this month said from the pulpit what most parishioners already knew: that the six churches he oversees will be folded into one, meaning the long history of ethnic parishes in that area — Slovak, Polish, Italian and Irish — will effectively end. Until then, there had been little vocal opposition to the process — especially compared with places such as Boston and Pittsburgh, where church consolidations in the past several years have sparked protests, rosary prayer rallies and even sit-ins. But, jolted by the news from McAdoo and fearful of similar decisions hitting their own churches in the Pottsville area, Babinchak and some of his fellow coal country Catholics have begun to push back. They placed a lengthy advertisement in The Morning Call on Jan. 16, calling the process a "gross and awful mistake" and demanding Bishop Edward Cullen put a stop to it. They have circulated petitions and may even lease a bus to bring disaffected parishioners to Allentown for a confrontation, Babinchak said. Among their contentions: Other Christian churches with lower attendance than Catholic parishes manage to stay open and serve the faithful. And combining four or five churches into one will make for overcrowding, especially at Christmas and Easter. "We just want to make sure our bishop isn't a more secular person," said Babinchak, fearful that the decision-making in Allentown isn't accounting for the spiritual welfare of the diocese's 273,000 Catholics in Berks, Carbon, Lehigh, Northampton and Schuylkill counties. Joseph Kubick of Port Carbon, meanwhile, disputes one of the core arguments propelling the consolidation. "The pope himself has said there are plenty of priests — you just have to ask for them," Kubick said, referring to growing ranks of clergy across Africa, where the Catholic population is growing faster than anywhere else. Pope Benedict XVI, in a recent letter to the faithful, acknowledged a shortage in some parts of the Catholic world and said a more "equitable" distribution of clergy would help solve the problem. Said Babinchak: "We're not asking for floods to come over. Just give us four or five missionary priests and keep two churches open in each town." Diocesan spokesman Matt Kerr said recruiting priests from overseas isn't the answer. "Africa needs its priests," he said. For the diocese, such bubbling-up of hard feelings isn't unexpected. When consolidation is over, the faithful will have said goodbye to buildings that were home to generations of baptisms and weddings, first communions and funerals — the events by which Catholics measure the progress of their lives. As more parishes reveal their plans in coming months, voices of opposition may grow. "It's like a death in the family," Kerr said. "Disappointment and emotion are an expected reaction and have been everywhere in the country where this has happened." But consolidation was inevitable. Priests are retiring or dying, and seminaries are struggling to attract candidates, with only 17 men from the diocese in priestly formation now. And many of the churches dotting the landscape — especially in the coal region, with its rich deposit of small, ethnic churches created to serve immigrant populations — are aging and expensive to maintain and have small congregations. By involving the laity in the process, church leaders had hoped to avoid the accusations of secrecy and foregone conclusions in decision-making that have fueled protests in other areas. Parish consolidation was one of six topics to emerge from the diocesan synod, a two-year gathering of clergy and lay people that concluded in 2006. While Babinchak and others say they have felt excluded from the process, the synod was preceded by town hall gatherings across the diocese where about 1,500 laypeople had their say on various topics. The diocese also conducted a Sunday Mass survey to gauge churchgoers' knowledge of their parishes. And the committees making recommendations on consolidations, one for each cluster of churches — called deanery regions — all include lay members. The process "was laity-driven," Kerr said. Contact: daniel.sheehan@mcall.com
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