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	Church Closings a New Chapter in Sad History By Marvin Read The Pueblo Chieftain February 23, 2008 http://www.chieftain.com/life/1203757417/3 The announcement this week that the Pueblo Catholic Diocese is shuttering two parishes - St. Patrick and Our Lady of the Assumption - is disappointing to the members of those congregations but no surprise. The closures represent locally the latest in a string of events that are changing the face of Roman Catholicism and that will, at some point, force church officials at every level to reconsider how to run that billion-member monolith. The Church, in Western Europe and the United States, has lost priests, nuns, schools, parishes, buildings, money and face. An institution less convinced of divine support might well consider throwing in the towel. At the risk of oversimplification, let's look at some significant, causative events in recent decades. The window-opening gathering of bishops known as the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) created a mind-boggling array of fresh, new attitudes and approaches to Church life. Theologically and liturgically, the Church inhaled vast amounts of fresh air and swept away curtains of cobwebbed thinking and practice. The changes came in a decade that, for Americans, was a maelstrom of other institution-rattling events - the free-love and dope-smoking generation; the alienation of government and young people during a misbegotten and unpopular war; and the assassination of three important Americans. The Church and its members were a part of both shifting currents, ecclesial and secular. Its clergy and religious also were caught up in a "make love, not war" attitude that saw the beginning of a decade-long loss of priests and nuns who went off to discover or rediscover themselves, their vocations and maybe even their spirituality in the arms of a loving spouse, or at least ditch habit or collar. While the numbers of practicing Catholics grew, the ranks of priests and nuns shrunk dramatically. Parishes that once had two, three or five priests were lucky to keep one, while many parishes had to share one overworked pastor. Parishes were linked or clustered to share administrative staffs and save money. The average age of the priests who remain creeps upward, with many pastors past the age of well-deserved retirement. For a variety of reasons - fewer nuns and an increased and rightful demand to be paid a just wage for their efforts - the Catholic school system withered in most dioceses and Catholic hospitals found themselves in a reconfigured stance - allied with other hospitals, Catholic and non-Catholic, or simply selling out to secular ownership. After Vatican II, three successive popes pinched off the sense of vitality that the council had spawned. The pedophile scandal of the last decade was seen by many as a coup de grace as more priests disappeared from the ranks, exposed for their abuse, defrocked and some jailed. Their bishops and other church officials were demeaned for their complicity and ineffectiveness in dealing with pervert priests. Dioceses were drained financially - some to the point of bankruptcy - to pay victims and their attorneys for abuse and sins of the past. The clergy, the episcopacy and the institution lost even more prestige than money. Throughout, the Church has failed to ignite and enliven the younger crowd, and new blood is rare. And thus it comes at last to the Pueblo diocese, as it has to other dioceses throughout the nation: nailing up the doors and windows of once-vibrant parishes, just as happened to the schools decades ago. St. Patrick and Assumption parishes are the first, but almost surely not the last. At some point, because the institution is worth saving, men in long, colorful robes in Rome and elsewhere will have to re-evaluate what it will take to provide enlivened humans at the altars and behind the pulpits: Women? Married priests? A re-evaluation of what priesthood and sisterhood mean and require? A Gospel stance that is seen as more relevant? Meaningful, not token, roles for the laity? The need, it would seem, is urgent, and requires bold, daring and progressive leadership at all levels. Or else the churches will just keep getting boarded up. Marvin Read may be contacted at marvinr@chieftain.com.
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