By Michael McAuliffe
Republican
April 4, 2010
http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2010/04/easter_is_about_hope_and_letti.html
SPRINGFIELD -- The recession and closing of churches in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield has made for troubling times for some Catholics in Western Massachusetts.
But the Most Rev. Timothy A. McDonnell, bishop of the diocese, has a message that will perhaps buoy the spirits of his fellow Catholics in the region on this holy day.
"Basically, Easter's about hope," McDonnell said on Good Friday at St. Michael's Cathedral. And hope, said the bishop, is "letting God be God, and letting him into our lives."
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| The Most Rev. Timothy A. McDonnell, bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield, has a message that will perhaps buoy the spirits of his fellow Catholics. Photo by Mark M. Murray |
McDonnell, 72, who was born during the Great Depression, referred to Good Friday in talking about weathering the toughest of times.
"Good Friday is always followed by Easter," he said. "Good Friday is always followed by Easter."
The cash-strapped Springfield Diocese has certainly been experiencing difficult times. Eighteen parishes were closed during the winter, and the budget for the diocese's central administration will be cut in the range of $4 million for the fiscal year that begins July 1.
"We're reconfiguring central administration, and that will mean a (cut of) 40 percent or more," McDonnell said.
Central administration funding includes money for Catholic schools and diocesan programs and ministries.
McDonnell said the diocese has been faced with an aging population of believers who live on fixed incomes and an exodus of families who have moved out of Western Massachusetts to follow job opportunities. Nearly all of the diocese's parishes have ended at least one fiscal year in the last decade with a deficit.
Only 11 of 120 parishes remained fiscally sound, leaving the diocese to cover millions of dollars in bills. McDonnell said he did not have the names of the parishes, nor has he asked for them.
"Basically, I'm not going to pit one parish against another," he said.
McDonnell said the remaining parishes are growing stronger fiscally, and that he is trying to reconfigure the diocese into vibrant parishes.
"I'm looking for a critical mass at Mass throughout the diocese," he said.
That does not mean filling every church, but having healthy attendance at each Mass.
"When you can go in and pick a pew there's an isolation, not a community," he said.
McDonnell also spoke to the situation involving Pope Benedict XVI. The pope has been accused by victims of clergy sexual abuse of being part of a culture of cover-up and confidentiality when he was the former archbishop of Munich and later as a Vatican cardinal directing policy on the handling of abuse cases.
"The problem is that so many priests are good men, but they've all been tarred with the same brush," said McDonnell in talking about sex abuse allegations. McDonnell became bishop of the Springfield Diocese six years ago after Bishop Thomas L. Dupre resigned amid allegations he sexually abused two boys decades earlier when he was a parish priest.
McDonnell also said sometimes clergy feel they have lost the benefit of the doubt, that they are considered guilty until proven innocent. Still, he said, great harm has been done.
"At the same time, there's no question we had horrendous, horrendous, evil crimes committed," McDonnell said.
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