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	Cities Suffering Pain of Loss By Marc Parry Albany Times Union January 17, 2009 http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=760860 [14-county list of church closings in Albany Diocese] Capital Region's Roman Catholic churches victim of sprawl, lack of priests ALBANY — Cities across the greater Capital Region will bear the brunt of a massive plan to close 33 worship sites throughout the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, Bishop Howard Hubbard announced Saturday. Troy will be ground zero in an unprecedented consolidation the 14-county diocese is undertaking to cope with shifting demographics and a shortage of priests. Hubbard, despite lobbying to change the outcome, decided to close six of the Collar City's dozen Catholic churches. That is more than any other city. And the list of soon-to-be-shuttered Troy churches includes St. Peter's, the state's third-oldest Catholic parish. Elsewhere, St. Teresa of Avila and Holy Cross will close in Albany. In Cohoes, St. Bernard's, St. Joseph's and St. Rita/Sacred Heart will all shut down. And in Schenectady, St. Mary's, St. John the Baptist and Immaculate Conception also will close. Altogether, the diocese is closing just under 20 percent of its 190 worship sites, a historic downsizing that is comparable to other consolidations in the dioceses of Buffalo, Syracuse,and Rochester. The decisions announced Saturday culminated a 2 1/2-year planning process, known as Called to BE Church, that involved thousands of Catholics and 38 local planning groups making suggestions to the bishop. Parishioners attending Masses on Saturday took the closings with mixed emotions: acceptance, nostalgia, disbelief, resignation, anger. A livid Dorothy Mall lingered in her pew after the 4:30 p.m. Mass at one of Troy's doomed churches, St. Patrick's. Mall described Called to BE Church as "a farce" whose outcome was known from the start. "The politics and the hypocrisy of this diocese leaves a lot to be desired," said Mall, 65, of Niskayuna. "This Called to BE Church did nothing but pit priest against priest, parish against parish, and parishioners against parishioners." Hubbard has publicly rebutted the claim that he knew all along what he planned to do. On Saturday, he empathized with the "painful adjustments" the closures will require of many of the sprawling diocese's 400,000 upstate Catholics, who began to learn the fate of their parishes during Masses on Saturday and will continue to get the news in churches today. "In fact, my own home parish of St. Patrick's in Troy will be closing — the church where I grew up, went to school, celebrated my first Mass as a priest of the diocese, and buried my parents," Hubbard said in a prepared statement. "But we as a church must acknowledge the social and demographic changes that require change, and remember our church must adapt, just as our ancestors' church adapted to rapid changes in society throughout the 19th and 20th centuries." Hubbard, who made the rounds of media outlets this month ahead of the plan's release, kept a low profile Saturday. He was unavailable for an interview. He did not attend any public events, said diocese spokesman Ken Goldfarb. Hubbard will celebrate Mass at 11 a.m. today in the Cathedral of Immaculate Conception. The closure of so many neighborhood landmarks isn't just a Catholic issue. Empty churches create "a hole in our community," said Lynn Kopka, a non-Catholic who heads the Troy's Washington Park Association. The longer they sit vacant, the more deterioration makes it hard to find other uses for buildings that make economic sense, Kopka said. The former St. Jean's, closed under a previous bishop some 35 years ago, sits vacant in the block south of Washington Park, Kopka said. Now the diocese plans to close St. Mary's as well. "It's one more wallop in the head for urban areas that are trying to move forward," Kopka said. Goldfarb responded to that concern by saying nearly all vacated church buildings have found other community uses and are no longer vacant. He sent the Times Union a church-by-church list of those uses, from a shelter for homeless women to a community arts center. Other cities beyond the Capital Region's four-county core will also lose churches, including Glens Falls in Warren County, where St. Alphonsus will close. In Montgomery County, three Amsterdam worship sites will close: St. Casimir's, St. John the Baptist, and St. Michael's. Some churches, like St. Francis de Sales in Troy, will close as early as next month. The calendar for the other closings will unfold over three years. The closures will disrupt important traditions at two Troy churches. The Latin Tridentine Mass will move from St. Peter's to St. Joseph's in Troy, Hubbard announced Saturday. And the Perpetual Adoration Chapel will go from St. Paul's to the chapel at St. Mary's Hospital, also in Troy. The diocese described Called to BE Church as a project created to realign resources to serve the greatest number of Catholics. With the exception of Saratoga Springs, the majority of cities in the Albany Diocese have lost between 25 and 39 percent of their population since 1960. Suburban towns have grown by 50 percent or more, according to the diocese. In Saratoga County, only one church — in Mechanicville — will close. Many city churches were built at a time when they served separate ethnic communities whose members walked to worship in buildings only blocks from each other. Today, the combined weekend Mass attendance is about 1,300 at six urban churches in Troy whose total seating capacity is 3,200. A single parish in Ballston Spa or Glenville gets the same attendance. Still, some fault bishops for neglecting newer immigrant groups who don't come from traditional European Catholic countries. For example, Pentecostal churches are pulling in large numbers of Latinos, said Peter Borre, chair of the Council of Parishes, a Boston-based advocacy group for parishes in danger of closing. "This is a massive failure on the part of bishops serving urban areas in the Northeast," Borre said. The Albany Diocese maintains what Goldfarb described as "a significant outreach program to the Hispanic community." It offers a Spanish language Mass in areas with substantial numbers of Spanish-speaking Catholics: Albany, Schenectady, Troy, Amsterdam Stuyvesant Falls. None of those locations will close, Goldfarb said. Marc Parry can be reached at 454-5057 or by e-mail at mparry@timesunion.com.
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