As Archdiocese Reorganizes, New York Catholics Await News about Their Parishes
By Sharon Otterman
An East Harlem church that was among the first in New York to welcome newcomers from Puerto Rico. An Upper East Side parish founded with $50 donations from working-class Italians in the 1920s. A 150-year-old Midtown church that is the only one in the city to offer a daily Latin Mass. Each of these parishes is set to hear this weekend whether it will be eliminated as part of the largest reorganization in the 164-year history of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York. Church officials say more than 50 parishes will be “consolidated” next year, the culmination of a planning process that began in 2010. And while the list of churches will not be released until Sunday, it is already clear that no corner of the archdiocese will be untouched. Protests have already begun at some endangered parishes, and more are expected across the archdiocese, whose territory includes 368 parishes in the Bronx, Manhattan, Staten Island and seven counties north of the city. In 2007, Cardinal Edward M. Egan closed 21 parishes, then the largest set of New York closings. The battles that ensued were public and wrenching, and in some cases, are still going on. “Some of our people will be sad, upset, critical and even angry,” Cardinal Egan’s successor as archbishop, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, wrote in a Thursday column in Catholic New York about the imminent changes. “Very understandable ... loyal Catholic people love their parishes, and consider them their spiritual home.” The driving factors behind New York’s consolidations remain stubbornly the same as in 2007. Among them, a shrinking number of priests, financial pressures and a declining number of Catholics being baptized and married in the church. The Brooklyn Diocese, which includes Queens, faced similar challenges and undertook a similar process, reducing its total number of parishes to 187 today from 199 in 2009. “We don’t have the finances to annually give $40 million to support unneeded parishes,” Cardinal Dolan wrote on his blog last year. Pastors of the affected parishes are to be notified of the final decisions on Friday and parishioners told on Sunday, according to information shared with church leaders. About a year ago, guided by outside consultants hired by the archdiocese, every parish was asked to assemble a team of parishioners to assess its strengths and weaknesses and discuss its findings with nearby parishes. An advisory committee of priests and lay people issued initial recommendations in April for parishes that would be closed or merged. After considering feedback, the committee made final recommendations to the cardinal in June.
The discussions were kept largely out of the public eye, with the archdiocese repeatedly declining to reveal the list of parishes recommended for elimination. Church officials encouraged parishioners to submit objections to the archdiocese quietly, not wage public fights. Even so, some endangered parishes began mobilizing. St. John the Baptist in Piermont started up a petition drive. Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Mount Vernon held a rally. Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Tuxedo conducted a letter-writing campaign. Holy Innocents in Midtown attracted support from traditionalist Catholics around the country because of its daily Latin Mass. Continue reading the main story Other churches kept the matter quiet. At the Church of the Holy Agony, on 101st Street in East Harlem, one of the first New York parishes built through donations from the Puerto Rican community, the pastor chose not to inform parishioners that the panel had recommended they consolidate with nearby St. Cecilia’s parish. “We did not tell them anything yet,” the Rev. Victor Elia, the pastor of Holy Agony, said in September, adding that he was concerned about the church’s becoming a “beehive, with people complaining and talking.” “We are waiting for the cardinal to make the final decision,” he said, and then “we will decide whether to fight it.”
Critics of the process have pointed out that Pope Francis has warned against church leaders’ being caught up in a “business mentality” and “management, statistics, plans and evaluations.” The critics contend that is what is driving the reorganization. At the Church of the Holy Rosary, on 119th Street in East Harlem, parishioners decided to wage a multipronged campaign after learning in April that the advisory panel recommended their parish consolidate with St. Paul’s parish, at St. Paul’s site, about half a mile away. The parishioners fear it is too great a distance for many of the older or handicapped congregants. Parishioners have been praying for years in the church’s basement, ever since the parish ran out of money to pay for repairs to the graceful sanctuary upstairs. Yet about 200 worshipers still attend the church each Sunday. “To us, it is more beautiful than St. Peter’s in Rome or any other church,” said Dominick DiCerto, a parishioner since 1957. “There’s a spirituality that people have, and they just fall in love.” Some parishioners applied for landmark status for the church’s 19th-century, Romanesque building, working largely on their own because the church’s last full-time pastor left last year. They found a contractor willing to provide an independent estimate to repair the main sanctuary. They found a nonprofit organization to rent the parish’s empty 11,000-square-foot convent and estimated that the rent, about $20,000 a month, would cover parish expenses and begin to repay a $1.4 million debt to the archdiocese.
Yet despite repeated requests, the parishioners have not been given permission by the archdiocese to show its main church sanctuary or convent to renters or contractors. Instead, their current administrator, the pastor of the neighboring Our Lady of Carmel parish, has ended their weekday Masses and taken away the parish’s ability to conduct baptisms, weddings and funerals, making basic fund-raising harder. “We haven’t been given the chance to fix ourselves,” said Mr. DiCerto, 83, who organizes religious education at the church. “It’s very upsetting to all the people, because we believe this church has the greatest potential for evangelization in this community.” Adding to the confusion for at-risk parishes is the shifting terminology used by archdiocesan officials. Last year, the archdiocese said that in the Bronx and Manhattan — which it called particularly oversaturated with parishes — the norm would be to close unneeded parishes. In the rest of the archdiocese, however, it said the default would be to merge them. In a merger, either one parish is eliminated and absorbed into an existing parish or both parishes are shuttered and a new combined parish is created. The redrawn parish might keep both church buildings open or close one of them. Cardinal Dolan has been using the terms interchangeably for months. But last week, the archdiocese’s spokesman said officials had decided only to merge, not close, parishes. The goal is to reduce potential legal challenges and ease pain, but some parishioners may not be soothed. Their parishes’ identities will still be lost, and they may still lose their church buildings. The changes are scheduled to take effect in mid-2015. While some of the endangered parishes, like Holy Rosary, are in debt to the archdiocese, others are flourishing financially, such as Our Lady of Peace, a small landmark church on East 62nd Street in Manhattan that was founded by Italian immigrants. Its parishioners have been petitioning the archdiocese for their church to be saved. Some say they suspect the decision to merge their parish with another is being driven by the value of their church’s real estate, a charge that the archdiocese denies. Robert J. Corti, 64, whose family has been baptized in Our Lady of Peace for generations, said it was folly for church officials to think that people with a deep emotional attachment to a parish would simply transfer their allegiance, and donations, to another. Like many Catholics at churches facing uncertain futures, he said he did not know where he would go if his beloved church closed. “I understand the challenges the cardinal faces, and as an accountant, I actually endorse the path they have taken,” Mr. Corti said. “I just hope the execution of the strategy is well thought out and that we don’t end up shooting ourselves in the foot.”
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