Cardinal, Please Spare This Church

By Peggy Noonan
Wall Street Journal
December 26, 2014

http://www.wsj.com/articles/peggy-noonan-cardinal-please-spare-this-church-1419580845

The Archdiocese of New York is threatening to close down my little church, a jewel in Catholicism’s crown on 89th Street just off Madison, in Carnegie Hill, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. This has caused great pain in our neighborhood this Christmas. St. Thomas More Church is where my son made his first holy communion, where he was confirmed. It is where at the presentation of the cross, on Good Friday, everyone in the parish who wants to—and that is everyone in the parish, poor people, crazy people, people just holding on, housekeepers, shopkeepers, billionaires—stands on line together, as equals, as brothers and sisters, to kiss the foot of the cross. It always makes me cry.

None of this is important except multiply it by 5,000, 10,000, a million people who’ve walked through our doors the past 75 years to marry, to bury, to worship.

There is context, of course, and context must always be respected. New York isn’t the only place that is or will be closing churches, so the story may have some national application.

The Catholic Church, the greatest refuge of the poor in the history of the world, is always in need of money. The New York Archdiocese itself supports schools, hospitals, charities, churches, orders. It is in constant need. There is the refurbishment of mighty St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which has been extremely expensive. There has been the cost, the past 20 years, of all the settlements and legal fees associated with the sex scandals. Compounding this is the constant bureaucratic challenge to manage resources efficiently, professionally.

The Church must save where it can. Churches have been closed. Most had particular stresses in common. Some lost parishioners due to demographic change and a peeling off of the faithful. Some cannot support themselves financially and become a drain on the archdiocese. Some churches have fallen behind in repair and have become structurally dangerous. Some lost their place in the heart and life of their communities.

But the great mystery at the heart of the threatened closing of St. Thomas is that none of these criteria apply to it. Not one.