By Michael O'Malley
Plain Dealer
June 30, 2010
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010/06/closing_of_st_emeric_marks_end.html
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| A list of hymns for the last Hungarian Mass at St. Emeric Church can be seen at the entrance Sunday. The final Mass will be said at 4 p.m. Wednesday when the West Side church will close. It is the last of 50 Catholic churches in Northeast Ohio to close during downsizing. |
It has been 15 months since Bishop Richard Lennon announced he was closing dozens of parishes in the Cleveland Catholic Diocese, sounding a death knell for mostly urban churches built long ago by people coming to a New World.
Week after week, Lennon, in the company of armed police, has presided over church closings throughout the eight-county diocese, saying final Masses and performing rituals to "desanctify" the holy places so they can be sold on the open real estate market.
On Wednesday, the bishop will close the last of 50 churches -- St. Emeric, a Hungarian parish established 106 years ago on Cleveland's near West Side. St. James in Lakewood closed on Saturday; St. Mary in Akron closed Sunday.
The closing of St. Emeric, which held its last Hungarian Mass on Sunday, signals an end to a downsizing that the bishop has said was necessary because of Catholics leaving the city, a shortage of priests and dwindling collection-basket cash.
It is the first downsizing in the history of the 163-year-old diocese. And Lennon, who closed churches in Boston before coming here four years ago, hopes it's the last.
"He did not want to come back in five or even 10 years and do this process again," said diocese spokesman Robert Tayek. "It's too difficult. The expectation is we will not have to go through this again in the near future."
Previous bishop's work unraveled
The closing of so many inner-city parishes -- about 70 percent of the 50 -- unraveled the work of Lennon's predecessor, Bishop Anthony Pilla, whose "Church in the City" program toiled for years to preserve urban parishes, calling on the entire diocese for help.
Pilla declined to comment on the closings. Tayek said Lennon was too busy last week to be interviewed.
Before the closings, the diocese had 224 parishes. The greatest number of losses were in the hearts of Cleveland, Akron and Lorain, followed by inner-ring suburbs like Lakewood and Euclid
Leah Gary of Rocky River, a member of the closed St. Peter in downtown Cleveland, said her heart sank when she recently drove by the empty St. Cecilia Church in Cleveland's Mount Pleasant neighborhood, one of the poorest sections of the city.
"I said to myself, 'Oh, my God, it's St. Cecilia's and it's all boarded up.' It just broke my heart to think that the Catholic Church is adding to the blight of the neighborhood."
Tayek said aid to the poor will be taken up by urban churches that survived and through charity programs operated by the diocese. A portion of money raised by a capital campaign the diocese plans to launch in the fall would go to programs for the poor, he said.
Hugs and tears ... and protests
Closing Masses in urban landmark churches were usually packed with people, many of whom had moved away from the neighborhoods and were no longer members of the parishes but came back for the memories.
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| A tearful Eszti Pigniczky, troopmaster for Hungarian Scout Troop 34, kneels in prayer during the final Hungarian Mass at St. Emeric Church on Cleveland's West Side Sunday. Bishop Richard Lennon will conduct the closing Mass at 4 p.m. Wednesday. It will mark the 50th and final church to close as part of the Cleveland Catholic Diocese downsizing. |
Inside echoing chambers of classic structures, there were hugs and tears, while outside, groups of protesters carried posters vilifying the bishop. A couple of times worshippers in the pews shouted their anger at Lennon on the altar.
Throughout such dramas, the bishop insisted that the Catholic Church was its people, not its buildings, a notion rejected by protesters.
Colleen O'Shaughnessy of Westlake, who carries an Irish flag at weekly protests outside St. Casimir, a boarded-up Polish church on Cleveland's East Side, said Lennon, an outsider from Boston, had no right to destroy Cleveland's history.
"I'm so sick of hearing that these historical churches are just bricks and mortar," she said. "So is St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, one of the most beautiful churches in the world. Should we tear that down too? Let's tear down the Pyramids while we're at it."
But Pat Ludwa of Euclid, a member of St. William, which merged with the closed St. Robert, said Lennon had no choice but to close churches, many of which were too empty of parishioners and too costly to maintain and repair.
"I can well understand why Bishop Lennon is not too well liked," said Ludwa. "But I think he did the best he could. If he had just let things go, that would have been really irresponsible.
"It doesn't do anyone any good if you've got a lot of churches and few being served. It's better to try to consolidate and make it a more vibrant body. Churches live and die like everything else."
With the death of St. Emeric on Wednesday, the largest Hungarian-speaking community in North America will lose its faith and cultural center. The church complex behind the West Side Market hosted a Hungarian language school, cultural banquets and a busy Hungarian Scouting program.
Angry Catholics meet, protest
Less than a month after Lennon announced his sweeping downsizing plan, a small group of angry Catholics from 10 parishes met at the Episcopal Trinity Cathedral in downtown Cleveland to form a protest group called Endangered Catholics.
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| The Rev. Shandor Siklodi gives communion to Ann Gyorky during the final Hungarian mass at St. Emeric Church Sunday. |
The group eventually grew to represent 14 parishes, including St. Emeric. They held weekly protests outside the diocese headquarters downtown and appealed to the Vatican in Rome to overturn Lennon's closings. About a dozen appeals are pending.
"We were so hopeful," said Nancy McGrath of Akron, whom the diocese threatened with arrest when she refused to leave a church after a final Mass. "We were convinced we would prevail and save churches.
"We knew it was a David and Goliath situation, but we thought David had a chance. We soon recognized David never had a chance against the Roman Catholic Church. It's too big, too powerful, too wealthy."
McGrath predicted the closings will force a significant number of Catholics to abandon their faith.
Tayek disagreed. "Yes, some left, of course, but not in any great numbers," he said, adding that if Catholics leave the faith because of church closings, "I'm not sure where they were in their faith to begin with."
"The whole premise was to build a stronger, more vibrant church," said Tayek. "We are finding that starting to take place."
Throughout the protests, the diocese emphasized that out of 750,000 Catholics in the diocese, only a small number engaged in public dissent. One of the largest protests -- about 300 people -- was held outside St. Patrick in Cleveland's West Park neighborhood when it closed last month.
Pat Singleton, a member of St. Patrick and president of Endangered Catholics, said thousands of people throughout the diocese signed petitions asking Lennon to keep churches open.
"People are more displeased with him than he thinks," she said.
Diocesan priests remain silent
Noticeably silent during the closings were the diocese's priests, with the exception of the Rev. Bob Begin, whose church, St. Colman on Cleveland's West Side, was one of two that Lennon initially ordered closed but then spared.
In March, Begin shared with the media a letter he wrote to Lennon. "I wish to make it clear to the people of our diocese that my own public silence on this matter and that of many other priests is not a silence that has agreed with your decisions," Begin wrote.
Despite criticism, protests, petitions and appeals, Lennon pressed on.
One by one, following final Masses -- "the Mass of Eviction," to protesters -- church doors were padlocked, stained-glass windows were covered with plywood and Deacon Jim Armstrong, assistant to Lennon, stepped in to liquidate sacred artifacts and church buildings.
"Our plan is not to tear down any churches, if possible," said Tayek.
So far, the diocese has 24 churches for sale, collectively listed at $15 million. It has already sold two. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in sacred artifacts like altars, gold-plated chalices, statues and stained-glass windows are being sold online.
Protesters, citing church law, say the diocese cannot sell or distribute assets of churches that have pending appeals in Rome. That includes St. Adalbert, St. Peter, St. Emeric, St. Barbara, St. Casimir, St. Patrick, St. Wendelin, all in Cleveland; St. Stanislaus in Lorain; Sacred Heart in Akron; St. James in Lakewood; and St. Mary in Bedford.
"It's not over yet," said Singleton. "We're still fighting."
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